Vulnerability assessments for public and private facilities

Abstract

From a homeland security perspective, office, storage and manufacturing buildings are not typically the subject of manmade disasters such as terrorist attacks. Such attacks would typically be limited to critical locations such as key government buildings, so-called ‘symbols of democracy’, transportation centres, nuclear power plants, and locations where ‘products of war’ are manufactured. Nonetheless, standards are emerging for property owners and building managers to assess their sites and facilities’ risk level/vulnerability to a possible terrorist attack. This paper sets forth nine categories of risk assessment on a six-point scale, and a five-level vulnerability rating based on the cumulative score resulting from this rating process.