The role of protection measures and their interaction in determining building vulnerability and resilience to bioterrorism

Abstract

Understanding the risk presented to buildings by bioterrorism has been a topic of research interest in recent years. Risk assessment methodologies and guidelines for the protection of buildings have been developed by a number of researchers, but it remains difficult to quantify the vulnerability and resilience of a building. It is an important issue from both biosecurity investment and operation point of view because different measures have different cost and operation implications. This paper reviews existing risk assessment methodologies, introduces a novel framework for classifying protection measures, and determines the inter-relation of the framework components and building vulnerability and resilience using a fault tree analysis within a biosecurity network system. Future work will develop weighting values for the different protection measures within the framework, allowing for the calculation of bioterrorism resilience of existing buildings, and to provide a decision making guide for building architects, builders, and managers for new and retrofitted buildings.