Review Article
The Role of Protection Measures and their Interaction in Determining Building Vulnerability and Resilience to Bioterrorism
Taylor J1, Margaritis D1, Nasir ZA1, Borrion H2 and Lai KM1,3*
1Healthy Infrastructure Research Centre, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, University College London (UCL), London, UK
2UCL Department of Security and Crime Science, London, UK
3Department of Biology, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
- *Corresponding Author:
- Lai KM
Department of Biology
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong
E-mail: Laikaman@hkbu.edu.hk
Received Date: December 31, 2012; Accepted Date: February 05, 2013; Published Date: February 08, 2013
Citation: Taylor J, Margaritis D, Nasir ZA, Borrion H, Lai KM (2013) The Role of Protection Measures and their Interaction in Determining Building Vulnerability and Resilience to Bioterrorism. J Bioterr Biodef 4:123. doi: 10.4172/2157-2526.1000123
Copyright: © 2013 Taylor J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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.
