Risk Management and Design of Critical Bridges for Terrorist Attacks

In the aftermath of the September 11th tragedies, the vulnerability of the United States' transportation infrastructure to terrorist attack has gained national attention. In light of this vulnerability, various governmental agencies are looking into ways to improve the design of structures to better withstand extreme loadings. Until recently, little attention has been given to bridges which are critical to our economy and transportation network. This paper summarizes the results of ongoing research to investigate economical, unobtrusive, and effective methods to mitigate the risk of terrorist attacks against critical bridges. It outlines a recommended plan to reduce these threats through proven risk management techniques, lists possible cost-effective security measures, discusses blast effects on bridges, and provides structural design and retrofit guidelines. It also discusses ongoing research oriented towards the development of a performance-based design methodology. In using proper risk management techniques, transportation managers and bridge engineers can mitigate the risk of terrorist attacks against critical bridges to an acceptable level, while ensuring efficient use of limited resources.     

Methodology to Assess Building Designs for Protection against Internal Chemical and Biological Threats

Recent world events involving chemical and biological (CB) attacks within critical infrastructure have highlighted a potential threat to buildings and their occupants. As a result, protecting buildings from CB attacks has become an important design consideration. A methodology has been developed to provide decision makers with the ability to assess multiple building designs for protection against an internal CB release. This methodology includes modeling and simulation of CB contaminant dispersion, a quantitative means to calculate a building’s protection level, and a weighted sum, multiple objective optimization for design selection. This paper outlines the phases in the methodology, and focuses on the application of multizone modeling and optimization techniques to compare design alternatives. The assessment of design options for CB protection in a hospital emergency room is used as an illustrative example. Optimal design options are determined based on the weighted combination functions for the building’s protection level, initial capital costs, and ongoing operations and maintenance costs.     

Operational Response Model for Physically Attacked Water Networks Using NSGA-II

Homeland security challenges civil engineers to develop solutions to protect critical infrastructure systems from intentional attacks. The water infrastructure system is one of eight critical infrastructures defined in the report by the President’s Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection (PDD 1998). This paper offers a model for an operational response strategy to mitigate consequences of intentional physical attacks on the water infrastructure system. An intentional physical attack occurs when a water infrastructure facility is nonfunctional because of physical destruction of the facility by individuals or groups with malicious intentions. Three indices are presented in this paper to measure the consequences of intentional physical attacks: (a) the degree of the disruption of critical infrastructure services, (b) economic loss, and (c) the number of people affected. Then, a multiobjective genetic algorithm is used to find solutions to affect minimum consequences among these indicators. Evaluation of the model using two water infrastructure networks indicates that the genetic algorithms can successfully identify Pareto-optimal solutions to reduce the negative consequences of different attack scenarios. These solutions represent a pool of strategies to be incorporated in emergency plans. In addition, the modified nondominated sorting genetic algorithms (NSGA-II) developed in this study can significantly improve the quality of the solution early in the evolution process. This can be very critical when the time available to obtain mitigation plans is very limited.     

A cognitive and social psychological analysis of disclosure laws and call for mortgage counseling to prevent predatory lending.

The federal government’s primary method of protecting consumers from “predatory lending” has been to enact disclosure laws that were supposed to enable consumers to make informed decisions. This article contends that notwithstanding these disclosure laws, unscrupulous mortgage brokers and lenders have been able to take advantage of certain described cognitive and social psychological phenomena to induce borrowers to enter into predatory loans, and argues that disclosures alone—even the recently revised disclosure forms—are inadequate. To better empower consumers to make informed decisions on their home loans, this article proposes and details a mortgage counseling intervention that contains both “in-person” and interactive computer counseling as a necessary supplement to disclosure laws. Designed properly, such an intervention would more effectively address the cognitive and social psychological barriers to rational decision making than disclosure alone. The article also examines the likely costs and benefits of the proposed mortgage counseling intervention in light of Illinois experience with mortgage counseling and urges policymakers to consider not only the costs of implementing mortgage counseling but also the costs of not providing for this counseling. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventing Disproportionate Collapse

“Disproportionate collapse” is structural collapse disproportionate to the cause; it is often, though not always, progressive, where “progressive collapse” is the collapse of all or a large part of a structure precipitated by damage or failure of a relatively small part of it. There have been many attempts to develop design guidelines and criteria that would reduce or eliminate the susceptibility of buildings to this form of failure. In recent years, the particular focus has been on the prevention of progressive collapse due to deliberate attack. The present study suggests, however, that these guidelines and criteria may be of limited value. Arguably the most important deficiency in the state of the art of design to prevent disproportionate or progressive collapse is uncertainty about the design event: We have the technology now to design for almost anything, but most recent building failures due to explosions and terrorist attacks have involved insults to the building not anticipated in design guidelines and criteria.     

Response to McNally and Breslau (2008).

Replies to comments by McNally and Breslau (see record 2008-05553-016) on the current authors' article (see record 2007-07130-003). McNally and Breslau expressed skepticism about the validity of multiple, independent studies showing that thousands of persons who were not directly exposed to the 9/11 attacks nevertheless developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. They mistakenly asserted that these studies are all based on acute symptoms, whereas in fact several studies document symptoms at six months and beyond, post-9/11. Throughout their comment, they reframed the 9/11 experience of persons across the country as a virtual trauma. This is a strategy not usually seen in scientific discourse. The critical point of our review is that many people can develop concerns about safety and other issues following a terrorist attack, and these can be fueled by the media and other influences. It was not our claim that concerns about flying, being in tall buildings, or visiting public monuments after the attacks were necessarily pathological. However, it is difficult to understand why McNally and Breslau (2008) wanted to minimize this and other extraordinary ripple effects of the 9/11 attacks in the first place. Our aim was to develop a model that might be useful in trying to understand and reduce the economic and psychological costs of terrorism. Should we not, as mental health professionals, contribute our expertise toward alleviating this level of fear and its consequences? (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Model for the 3D Location of Buried Assets Based on RFID Technology

As construction and renovation equipment excavate in the vicinity of utility lines, the buried infrastructure is likely to suffer some form of “attack,” be that simple mechanical abrasion or a major rupture. Damage to underground services can lead to widespread disruption and significant upstream (service provider) and downstream (end user) losses, often resulting in whole communities being isolated from emergency services and losing essential utilities such as water, gas, and electricity. The ability to physically determine on site the location of underground utilities is critical to reduce risk and consequence during excavation. For these reasons, the location and efficient maintenance of buried assets are a high priority, especially for utility companies. This paper presents the development of a model for the three-dimensional (3D) location of buried assets based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and findings from laboratory and field experiments. Passive, low frequency RFID devices were used during the research. Two approaches of this model, “Method A” and “Method B,” along with major experimental findings are discussed within the paper. In order to validate the applicability of each method, “real-world” field experiments were performed. The findings from this research demonstrated that applying RFID technology to locate buried assets has a great potential for facilitating the accurate 3D data of underground infrastructure.     

追忆汶川地震浅谈抗震概念设计

我们国家地域辽阔,是一个地震频发的国家,历史上震害不断,新中国成立以来,就曾发生过几次震级较强的地震,给广大人民群众的生命财产造成了难以估量的损失。尤其是几年前发生的"5.12"汶川8.0级特大地震,给国家和人民带来了巨大的灾难,数以万计的鲜活生命瞬间消失在满目疮痍的高山河谷间。痛定思痛,有许多值得人们反思的问题,作为一名建筑设计领域的从业人员,如何提高建筑抗震性能、保护广大人民群众的生命财产安全显得尤为重要。     

Global Rural Electrification: A Different Race Initiative

“Perhaps the single greatest contribution that could be made to environmental conservation would be the invention of a satisfactory fuel‐wood substitute” for developing nations. Providing electric power from orbit under a program of energy as foreign aid to developing nations will benefit the local and global environment and people living on the margins of existence, and it will provide technically challenging jobs to the engineers and scientists of all the nations that undertake such a massive project. Civil engineers can, if they and their professional societies so choose, play a significant, if not integral, role in using the resources of Earth and its surroundings for the benefit of mankind under a program of energy from space. This paper extends the concepts from a previous work by the writer to global rural electrification based on electric power from power stations, built in geosynchronous orbit out of lunar materials, distributed to individual villages and rural electric cooperatives via microwaves for a cost of between 6 cents and 45 cents per kilowatt‐hour. Power would be available in modular increments of 25–100 kilowatts with an average capital cost as low as $5,000 per kilowatt. The goals of the program for global rural electrification are twofold: to provide electric power from space at competitive costs, relative to current costs, to rural and agricultural areas, and to divert resources from weapons development to infrastructure development. The potential for involvement by civil engineers is limited only by their own lack of vision and daring.     

The dragons of inaction: Psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Most people think climate change and sustainability are important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure are part of the answer, but psychological barriers also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, or “dragons of inaction”: limited cognition about the problem, ideological worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with key other people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists, technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens overcome these psychological barriers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressing thoughts and feelings following a collective trauma: Immediate responses to 9/11 predict negative outcomes in a national sample.

Collective traumas can negatively affect large numbers of people who ostensibly did not experience events directly, making it particularly important to identify which people are most vulnerable to developing mental and physical health problems as a result of such events. It is commonly believed that successful coping with a traumatic event requires expressing one's thoughts and feelings about the experience, suggesting that people who choose not to do so would be at high risk for poor adjustment. To test this idea in the context of collective trauma, 2,138 members of a nationally representative Web-enabled survey panel were given the opportunity to express their reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on that day and those following. Follow-up surveys assessing mental and physical health outcomes were completed over the next 2 years. Contrary to common belief, participants who chose not to express any initial reaction reported better outcomes over time than did those who expressed an initial reaction. Among those who chose to express their immediate reactions, longer responses predicted worse outcomes over time. Implications for myths of coping, posttrauma interventions, and psychology in the media are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Construction Business Competitiveness and Global Benchmarking

The focus of this paper is on developing “quality” and sustainable construction businesses capable of riding market shifts and growing both nationally and internationally. Knowledge of current management tools and techniques will no doubt prove useful in the quest for transforming a nonperforming business. However, no long lasting effect can be expected unless attention is paid to the fundamental principles and practices that govern organizational behavior, including the views an organization has of its customers, competitors, and itself. Commercial performance of organizations has increasingly become not only dependent on resource efficiency, but also on retooling and aggressive new business development initiatives as well as reduction in base production and operational costs. The human factors and mental models that people have within any given organization profoundly affect the success or failure of that organization. In this paper a critical review of the current concepts and techniques influencing construction organizations is offered with a focus on people and organizational improvements. A set of critical success factors is then distilled, followed by a systematic process of applying the same to achieve success.     

Collection and Analysis of Critical Infrastructure Interdependency Relationships

Critical infrastructure represents important national assets for producing or distributing continuous flows of essential goods or services. When one aspect of the critical infrastructure shuts down due to an external disruption, other portions of the system that need those goods or services are likely to stop shortly thereafter, thus exacerbating the damage caused by the external disruption. Literature on critical infrastructure interdependency (CII) shows a need for analyzing failure records with time information from different types of critical infrastructure. This paper presents a knowledge discovery process for CII to extract records of frequent patterns of critical infrastructure failure that are directly or indirectly triggered by external disruptions. The knowledge discovery process, including integration of critical infrastructure failure records and their transformation into the data format needed by a data mining algorithm, is described. The paper includes a discussion on a disaster mitigation approach that could be used to stop CII-related failure events, and it includes the analysis of the results of sample critical infrastructure failure records. Disaster mitigation officials can employ the proposed approach to explore CII and to design countermeasures when a disaster hits.     

Whole Life Performance Assessment: Critical Success Factors

Whole life costing (WLC) has become the best practice in construction procurement and it is likely to be a major issue in predicting whole life costs of a construction project accurately. However, different expectations from different organizations throughout a project’s life and the lack of data, monitoring targets, and long-term interest for many key players are obstacles to be overcome if WLC is to be implemented. A questionnaire survey was undertaken to investigate a set of ten common factors and 188 individual factors. These were grouped into eight critical categories (project scope, time, cost, quality, contract/administration, human resource, risk, and health and safety) by project phase, as perceived by the clients, contractors and subcontractors in order to identify critical success factors for whole life performance assessment (WLPA). Using a relative importance index, the top ten critical factors for each category, from the perspective of project participants, were analyzed and ranked. Their agreement on those categories and factors were analyzed using Spearman’s rank correlation. All participants identify “Type of Project” as the most common critical factor in the eight categories for WLPA. Using the relative index ranking technique and weighted average methods, it was found that the most critical individual factors in each category were: “clarity of contract” (scope); “fixed construction period” (time); “precise project budget estimate” (cost); “material quality” (quality); “mutual/trusting relationships” (contract/administration); “leadership/team management” (human resource); and “management of work safety on site” (health and safety). There was relatively a high agreement on these categories among all participants. Obviously, with 80 critical factors of WLPA, there is a stronger positive relationship between client and contactor rather than contractor and subcontractor, client and subcontractor. Putting these critical factors into a criteria matrix can facilitate an initial framework of WLPA in order to aid decision making in the public sector in South Korea for evaluation/selection process of a construction project at the bid stage.     

Rapid Bridge Replacement under Emergency Situation: Case Study

The terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, and subsequent potential threats to the United States transportation systems have presented an urgent need to elevate the security of the transportation infrastructure and to develop emergency response plans to quickly react to the possible consequences of an extreme event. Highway bridges, as critical components of the nation’s transportation network, have been brought to closer attention by government agencies. A research project was conducted to identify strategies and technologies to restore the use of a damaged bridge quickly. One of the tasks associated with the research was to perform several case studies of previous bridge replacements following extreme events. These events include explosion and fire caused by vehicle impact, vessel collision with a bridge, and damage caused by flood and earthquake. By studying the cases, the research team seeks to identify and expand on lessons learned and address which actions did and did not work well given the circumstances of the incident. These lessons have great value to the people who need to develop and implement an emergency response plan.     

Let's get serious: Communicating commitment in romantic relationships.

Are men or women more likely to confess love first in romantic relationships? And how do men and women feel when their partners say “I love you”? An evolutionary–economics perspective contends that women and men incur different potential costs and gain different potential benefits from confessing love. Across 6 studies testing current and former romantic relationships, we found that although people think that women are the first to confess love and feel happier when they receive such confessions, it is actually men who confess love first and feel happier when receiving confessions. Consistent with predictions from our model, additional studies have shown that men's and women's reactions to love confessions differ in important ways depending on whether the couple has engaged in sexual activity. These studies have demonstrated that saying and hearing “I love you” has different meanings depending on who is doing the confessing and when the confession is being made. Beyond romantic relationships, an evolutionary–economics perspective suggests that displays of commitment in other types of relationships—and reactions to these displays—will be influenced by specific, functional biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identity and resurrective ideology in an age of trauma.

The author extends his conception of emotional trauma as a shattering of the tranquilizing “absolutisms of everyday life” that shield us from our finitude and our existential vulnerability, to a consideration of collective trauma. Using the collective trauma of 9/11 and its aftermath as his prime example, he illustrates how traumatized people fall prey to “resurrective ideologies” that promise to restore the sheltering illusions that have been lost. He suggests that an alternative to these grandiose illusions can be found in our “kinship-in-finitude.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Going green to be seen: Status, reputation, and conspicuous conservation.

Why do people purchase proenvironmental “green” products? We argue that buying such products can be construed as altruistic, since green products often cost more and are of lower quality than their conventional counterparts, but green goods benefit the environment for everyone. Because biologists have observed that altruism might function as a “costly signal” associated with status, we examined in 3 experiments how status motives influenced desire for green products. Activating status motives led people to choose green products over more luxurious nongreen products. Supporting the notion that altruism signals one’s willingness and ability to incur costs for others’ benefit, status motives increased desire for green products when shopping in public (but not private) and when green products cost more (but not less) than nongreen products. Findings suggest that status competition can be used to promote proenvironmental behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributors to Construction Debris from Electrical and Mechanical Work in Hong Kong Infrastructure Projects

The crucial problem of construction debris is of increasing concern in Hong Kong. In the construction industry, the electrical and mechanical (E&M) installations in the infrastructure, for example, buildings, tunnels, or dams, are some of the major and usually complex components. Difficulty in coordinating the various trades affects productivity in general, and has a major impact on the quantity of construction debris. By identifying the sources of waste at each stage of E&M engineering work, some of the construction debris can be eliminated at the source during production. This paper investigates the critical production shortcomings in the E&M sector in Hong Kong. The study is based on a survey that includes a preliminary questionnaire survey, brainstorming exercises with a focus group, structured interviews with experienced frontline supervisors, and a second focus group exercise to test findings and proposed measures. The principal findings are that “poor coordination” and “design changes and/or errors” are major contributors to variations or change orders and rework, which in turn result in a high volume of construction debris. The results also indicate that construction debris can be minimized in the E&M sector of the construction industry, if the material wastes from incidental work are reduced and also controlled better in a new work process flow pattern through recommended construction project management improvements for reducing critical production shortcomings.