Critical Infrastructure

Issue:  Critical infrastructures are by definition significant targets for terror events.  However, critical infrastructure cannot be defined by physical structure alone – rather, critical infrastructure is best defined by what may make it an attractive target, either politically, economically, inherent iconic value, or necessity in provision of key services.  As such, some key examples of prospective critical infrastructure targets could include Wall Street, the Pentagon, Las Vegas Casinos, Hospitals, Embassies, Ports/Harbors, Law Enforcement facilities, as well as other Financial, Government/Political, Entertainment, Medical, Trade/Shipping and Health provision facilities.  Dycor’s recent operational surveillance experience across both indoor and outdoor events at the 2010 Winter Olympics and the G8/G20 International Leaders Conference held in Vancouver, and Toronto Canada, indicates that effective event planning and operations can greatly deter and mitigate the possibility of catastrophic events. 

Background:  Daily, hundreds of thousands of people work within the confines of critical infrastructure, where they are subjected to potential hazards that are constantly present in the confined spaces of their work environment. In many ways this is the highest terror threat as these facilities remain stationary targets.  The events of 9/11 particularly underscore this fact, as do subsequent attacks in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.   There continue to be daily news accounts of terror-related events on critical infrastructure.  In addition to manmade events, natural diseases can be incubated inside these facilities, in which where their spread can become a significant health hazard.  Enhanced security surveillance addresses both manmade and naturally occurring health threats. The critical security surveillance issue is to determine real-time environmental aerosol changes from naturally occurring environmental baseline conditions to evaluate and sample for potential natural or manmade human threats.  Our experience in conducting critical infrastructure testing of aerosols indicates that even the smallest threat release transits an entire facility and evaluation of these collected samples provides the scientific/forensic basis for determining threat impacts, and the necessary healthcare actions to mitigate those threats. 

Discussion: The key to providing an enhanced security surveillance solution is planning for potential terror activities while never falling prey to relying on a single solution.  As such, planning and operations are multi-faceted and need to be directly tied to security responses.  Therefore effective security options and responses within Critical Infrastructures have to be thoroughly planned and implemented otherwise they can result in panic and actually inhibit required response actions. A critical real-time foundational network of instruments strategically mapped and placed in vulnerable areas is a must. But just as important is the expertise to be able to determine whether anomalous readings are actual threat signatures or not.  False alarms and inappropriate security responses need to be absolutely minimized.  An example of a networked instrumentation system which Dycor’s experienced analytical operators can deploy would include (but not be limited to) the following:

• Aerosol sensors capable of identifying threats such as: biological (including disease), chemical, radiological, and explosive;
• Particle sensing: tied into HVAC controls to isolate and control airflows;
• Aerosol samplers: high volume for instantaneous, and low volume for long term environmental monitoring;
• Forensic identification: quick response typing of airborne biological and disease;
• Secure  Communications;
• Visual situational awareness picture;
• Meteorological sensing tied to threat mapping.

Summary:  At Dycor we are instrumentation-agnostic.  However, as Defense Department Testers, Security Force Operators and Systems Integrators, we have considerable insight into which instruments perform best in different environments. It’s this experience combined with our years of international operational field experience that separates us from our competition. Dycor embodies the “Trust Me” partnership approach.