Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack

Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309165059
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The anthrax attacks in fall 2001 spurred an extensive and costly decontamination effort where many decisions had to be made about which sites required cleanup, what method to use, how to determine the effectiveness of the cleanup, and how "clean" the building had to be for reoccupation. As part of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and managed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Research Council was asked to consider the criteria that must be met for a cleanup to be declared successful, allowing the reoccupation of a facility. The report finds that efficiently sampling and characterizing a pathogen is critical for choosing the best remediation strategy. However, there should be no universal standard for deciding when a building is safe to re-enter because varying pathogen amounts and characteristics could require different strategies. The report offers a flowchart for decision-makers that includes questions about the characteristics of the pathogen; how far it has spread; whether it is transmissible between humans; and how long it will survive to pose a threat. The report also recommends that a risk-assessment approach be adopted as part of a strategy for achieving a "socially acceptable" standard for cleanup.

Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack

Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309165059
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
The anthrax attacks in fall 2001 spurred an extensive and costly decontamination effort where many decisions had to be made about which sites required cleanup, what method to use, how to determine the effectiveness of the cleanup, and how "clean" the building had to be for reoccupation. As part of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and managed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Research Council was asked to consider the criteria that must be met for a cleanup to be declared successful, allowing the reoccupation of a facility. The report finds that efficiently sampling and characterizing a pathogen is critical for choosing the best remediation strategy. However, there should be no universal standard for deciding when a building is safe to re-enter because varying pathogen amounts and characteristics could require different strategies. The report offers a flowchart for decision-makers that includes questions about the characteristics of the pathogen; how far it has spread; whether it is transmissible between humans; and how long it will survive to pose a threat. The report also recommends that a risk-assessment approach be adopted as part of a strategy for achieving a "socially acceptable" standard for cleanup.

Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack

Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309096618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
The anthrax attacks in fall 2001 spurred an extensive and costly decontamination effort where many decisions had to be made about which sites required cleanup, what method to use, how to determine the effectiveness of the cleanup, and how "clean" the building had to be for reoccupation. As part of a project funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and managed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the National Research Council was asked to consider the criteria that must be met for a cleanup to be declared successful, allowing the reoccupation of a facility. The report finds that efficiently sampling and characterizing a pathogen is critical for choosing the best remediation strategy. However, there should be no universal standard for deciding when a building is safe to re-enter because varying pathogen amounts and characteristics could require different strategies. The report offers a flowchart for decision-makers that includes questions about the characteristics of the pathogen; how far it has spread; whether it is transmissible between humans; and how long it will survive to pose a threat. The report also recommends that a risk-assessment approach be adopted as part of a strategy for achieving a "socially acceptable" standard for cleanup.

Bioterror

Bioterror PDF Author: R. William Johnstone
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313087679
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
This book uses the 2001 anthrax attacks as its point of departure for an analysis of the past, present, and future of America's preparedness to deal with major challenges to public health, including bioterrorism and pandemic flu. The study identified the strength and weaknesses of the system while making recommendations for improvements. This allows the U.S. to be better prepared if faced with a larger or different biological threat. This book looks for linkages not only between bioterrorists and pandemic defenses, but also between public health security and the wider field of homeland security. Johnstone highlights some key foundation plans and strategies that are to serve as a basis for public health security. Failure to address these crucial issues not only creates unfounded mandates but also inhibits priority setting, leadership, and accountablity. Bioterror: Anthrax, Influenza, and the Future of Public Health Security utilizes a large number of sources from within both the public health and public policy communities to document how each sector responded to the anthrax attacks and re-emergent infectious diseases, and how those responses have evolved to the present day, As with other areas of homeland security, sustained progress in public health security is not likely until basic questions about funding priorities and leadership are successfully addressed. In the response to the only mass casualty event in the United States since 2001, Hurricane Katrina, and in various emergency simulation exercises such as TOPOFF series, major performance deficiencies have been observed. This book brings together a variety of sources, the best available evidence on the status of the public health security system at three distinct points: before 2001; during and immediately after the anthrax attacks; and in the period from 2004 to the present.

Protecting Building Occupants and Operations from Biological and Chemical Airborne Threats

Protecting Building Occupants and Operations from Biological and Chemical Airborne Threats PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309109558
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Protecting buildings and their occupants from biological and chemical attacks to ensure continuous building operations is seen as an urgent need in the Department of Defense, given recent technological advances and the changing threats. Toward this end, the Department of Defense established the Immune Building Program to develop protective systems to deter biological and chemical attacks on military facilities and minimize the impacts of attacks should they occur. At the request of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Research Council convened a committee to provide guiding principles for protecting buildings from airborne biological or chemical threat agents and outline the variables and options to consider in designing building protection systems. This report addresses such components of building protection as building design and planning strategies; heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems; filtration; threat detection and identification technologies; and operational responses. It recommends that building protection systems be designed to accommodate changing building conditions, new technologies, and emerging threats. Although the report's focus is on protection of military facilities, the guiding principles it offers are applicable to protection of public facilities as well.

WMD Terrorism

WMD Terrorism PDF Author: Stephen M. Maurer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262512858
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 619

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Book Description
This collection of essays is a current and comprehensive review of what scientists and scholars know about WMD terrorism and America's options for confronting it. Complete with mathematical methods for analyzing terrorist threats and allocating defense resources, this multidisciplinary perspective addresses all forms and defenses of WMD, and the role of domestic U.S. politics in shaping defense investments and policies. Also identified are multiple instances in which the conventional wisdom is incomplete or misleading.

Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007

Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 PDF Author: Michael d'Arcy
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815764601
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Immediately after September 11, the Brookings Institution began a comprehensive, multidisciplinary project focused on the key policy challenge of these dangerous times—assessing and improving homeland defense. That intense effort produced Protecting the American Homeland, and it continues in this important new book. In Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007, Brookings foreign policy experts analyze current homeland security concerns and the adequacy (or inadequacy) of current policies designed to address them. The authors present both the big picture and the smaller components of homeland security policy that make up the whole. They make specific recommendations on intelligence reform, science and technology policy and the protection of critical infrastructure within the United States. They also look ahead to consider what dangers we should anticipate and plan for, recommending policies that will work to that end. One of the strands running through Protecting the Homeland 2006/2007 is the need to "stitch the seams" in our homeland security blanket through greater integration and coordination. The authors emphasize that the U.S. federal government must work together with key partners who have been insufficiently integrated into American homeland security activities to date. These actors include foreign governments, state and local government, and the private sector, and the coordination must occur in several different areas (e.g. border protection, finance, technology, intelligence). The U.S. government should not—indeed, it cannot—do it alone. By its very nature, homeland security is a problem that defies the usual bureaucratic boundaries. Effective homeland security policy demands intense collaboration on new issues and between organizations that have not traditionally needed each other. This book is of interest and importance to journalists, analysts, policymakers, scholars, and citizens concerned with protecting their homeland against terrorism and r

Medical Response to Major Incidents and Disasters

Medical Response to Major Incidents and Disasters PDF Author: Sten Lennquist
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642218946
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
This book, written by members of the core faculty responsible for European courses on Medical Response to Major Incidents (MRMI), is a practical guide for all medical staff on how to respond to a wide range of disaster scenarios. The entire spectrum of knowledge is covered, from command and coordination through to the management of individual casualties. Central importance is attached to the key component of decision making by explaining what needs to be done for patients in particular situations and the required order and timing of treatment measures. Simplified methods receive due attention, as it is often necessary for medical staff to administer primary treatment outside of their own specialty. This book will prove an invaluable aid to all who may be involved in the response to major accidents and disasters, including medical and nursing students, ambulance crew, and military personnel as well as medical specialists.

Food Safety and Food Security

Food Safety and Food Security PDF Author: John G. Voeller
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118651820
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Food Safety and Food Security features articles from the Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security covering topics related to processing and packaging methods to protect food supply against contamination and to mitigate the consequences of contaminated foods. It discusses related detection systems as well as decontamination and disposal of contaminated foods.

A Pre-event Recovery Planning Guide for Transportation

A Pre-event Recovery Planning Guide for Transportation PDF Author: Patricia Bye
Publisher: Transportation Research Board
ISBN: 0309283388
Category : Emergency management
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 753: A Pre-Event Recovery Planning Guide for Transportation is designed to help transportation owners and operators in their efforts to plan for recovery prior to the occurrence of an event that impacts transportation systems. The guide includes tools and resources to assist in both pre-planning for recovery and implementing recovery after an event. NCHRP Report 753 is intended to provide a single resource for understanding the principles and processes to be used for pre-event recovery planning for transportation infrastructure. In addition to the principles and processes, the guide contains checklists, decision support tools, and resources to help support pre-event recovery planning."--Publisher description.

Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things

Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things PDF Author: Ryan Ellis
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262538547
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
An examination of how post-9/11 security concerns have transformed the public view and governance of infrastructure. After September 11, 2001, infrastructures—the mundane systems that undergird much of modern life—were suddenly considered “soft targets” that required immediate security enhancements. Infrastructure protection quickly became the multibillion dollar core of a new and expansive homeland security mission. In this book, Ryan Ellis examines how the long shadow of post-9/11 security concerns have remade and reordered infrastructure, arguing that it has been a stunning transformation. Ellis describes the way workers, civic groups, city councils, bureaucrats, and others used the threat of terrorism as a political resource, taking the opportunity not only to address security vulnerabilities but also to reassert a degree of public control over infrastructure. Nearly two decades after September 11, the threat of terrorism remains etched into the inner workings of infrastructures through new laws, regulations, technologies, and practices. Ellis maps these changes through an examination of three U.S. infrastructures: the postal system, the freight rail network, and the electric power grid. He describes, for example, how debates about protecting the mail from anthrax and other biological hazards spiraled into larger arguments over worker rights, the power of large-volume mailers, and the fortunes of old media in a new media world; how environmental activists leveraged post-9/11 security fears over shipments of hazardous materials to take on the rail industry and the chemical lobby; and how otherwise marginal federal regulators parlayed new mandatory cybersecurity standards for the electric power industry into a robust system of accountability.