Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Port and harbors have expanded dramatically in the last few decades at a pace driven by rapid globalization of commercial trade and industrial activity, population expansion in marine regions, and the transfer of public and private wealth to coastal recreation. The impacts of ports on coastal environments can be considerable. The development of industrial facilities at ports and associated demands for water, land, and shoreline is unavoidable given their potential national and global economic significance. Just as the international community has increasingly become aware of the importance of ports and harbors, there has been a growing awareness of the need to ensure that health, environment, and safety are adequately protected and considered as an integral function of these facilities. This increased awareness has led to a closer examination of environmental security. At the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, , held 16–19 March 2006 in Venice, Italy, a working group of international risk assessment, disaster response, environmental modeling, and engineering experts from nine countries explored the importance of environmental security and challenges faced by coastal ports and harbors. The discussions drew heavily from experiences at ports located around the world. This chapter summarizes the findings of the working group and concludes with a summary of technical challenges and recommendations for future research.

The attacks of September 11 exposed the vulnerability of the American homeland to terrorism. Terrorists have already expressed their intentions to continue their aggression towards United States. Their goal is to incur maximum economic damage, inflict mass casualties, spread unprecedented fear among citizens, and thus destabilize the nation to further their agenda. Many critical sites lie across U.S. maritime borders, all of which could be potential targets to accomplish these goals. All these sites are simple elements of a complex body where the vulnerability of the whole system is a function of the vulnerability of the weakest element against an adaptive adversary. Ports, nuclear facilities, liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities, urban areas, bridges, chemical plants, and other critical infrastructure are all elements of this complex system. In this paper, we review the current status of security in the American maritime realm and discuss the programs and initiatives that seek to minimize terrorism risk. Our goal is to direct attention to various possible avenues that could be used to illegally introduce weapons, explosives, and other contraband as well as to penetrate terrorists into the American homeland.

The terms environmental and human security and vulnerability are defined in this paper in a broad sense. Human security is directly related to environmental preservation (water, air, soil, ecosystems, and biodiversity). Environmental and human security have been recognized as key factors for socioeconomic growth and prosperity and sustainable development. Regulation and policy to sustain environmental and human security in European Union (EU) countries, and more specifically in the Mediterranean region, are briefly reviewed in this presentation. Examples from environmental sectors like water resources may include the EU Water Framework Directive (EU-WFD) and institutional issues for facing water quality degradation and hydrological extremes, such as floods.

Europe has recently faced several major industrial accidents generated by various causes. They have led to a lot of casualties and major damage to the environment (e.g., Enschede 2000, Toulouse 2001, and Ath 2004). Moreover, people have already stressed the influence of terrorism in the emergence of new risks. The geopolitical context has brought about risks which cannot be completely avoided. This is demonstrated by many events, including, for example, the sarin attack, anthrax letters, USS Cole and Limburg attacks, drinking water contamination, and actions on industrial sites. Regarding SEVESO establishments and similar critical infrastructures like ports and marshalling yards, these concerns are not included in the safety report required by the authorities. In this paper, the authors establish a brief inventory of the available methodologies and tools required to elaborate a threat assessment. Then they formulate some suggestions for integrating security aspects in a risk assessment, to globalize prevention and response approaches in case of accident or intentional acts on chemical sites. An example of the adaptation of the ARAMIS methodology is explained in the last part.

Over the past decades, container transport has been booming with an annual average growth of 9.3% increasing its modal share from 6.3% in 1980 to over 25% currently. The world’s largest container ports now handle over 20 million 20-ft-equivalent units (TEUs) per annum and have shown spectacular growth over the past years, with the main pivot of growth being the Far East. The global flow of containers represents the lifeblood of modern economies, without which we would not be able to enjoy the way of life that we have. This unfortunately is exactly one of the criteria terrorists are known to apply when selecting their targets, rendering the global containerized supply chain a potentially attractive target.

The transportation of dangerous goods in Europe constitutes a serious problem. This paper addresses the complexity of road and train transportation networks and the challenges of multiple jurisdictions while applying the perspectives of goods logistics and industrial risk analysis to the analysis of safety issues. Legislative impacts are discussed, and examples from two provinces in Italy are presented. Recommendations include the development of protocols and agreements for transboundary cooperation and further research in this complex area of study.

This paper discusses the vulnerability of lifelines (major utilities and infrastructure systems such as those relating to water, energy, and communications) to earthquake. Direct, induced, and indirect impacts are considered. The inter- and intradependent character of lifelines is recognized and frameworks are introduced to facilitate the appraisal of lifeline vulnerability in the context of multiple interrelationships, stakeholders, and information sources as well as instances of incomplete or insuffi cient available data. The development of complete event scenarios is discussed, as a method of creating a holistic picture of potential impacts. The frameworks and methodology presented here are then demonstrated by application to the province of Brescia, Italy, an area subject to seismic activity. These vulnerability assessment techniques are proposed by the authors as an initial though highly integrated basis for future research.

With the growth of information technology (IT) systems, network security is rapidly becoming a critical business concern. Due to the interconnectivity of IT systems, a comprehensive description of all of the key elements and relationships that make up an organization’s network security is needed, which can be referred as network security architecture. The value of this architecture is often questioned by organizations in terms of its practical application. This paper has presents a new approach to the network security architecture in order to better describe and instantiate the Zachman Framework capabilities. The network security architecture of academic centers is discussed as a case study to show how a conceptual model can be applied to a real organization.

Emerging European legislation is changing the scope of water management from the local scale to basin scale. The focus is shifting from sectoral, issue-by-issue management to the protection of aquatic ecosystems, as well as the terrestrial ecosystems and wetlands linked to them. There has also been a movement from addressing problems in isolation on land, in freshwaters, in estuaries or the coastal zone, to integrating these zones, and extending the ecosystem approach to whole shelf areas. Ecosystem protection will thus affect how many human activities are regulated and managed in coastal and port areas, but legislation is also designed to balance these ecosystem objectives with socioeconomic needs and goals. Sustainable protection of ecosystems requires an expansion of traditional ecological risk assessment methods, in order to address multiple risk drivers on multiple spatial and temporal scales.

Environmental security tends to focus on the dramatic, partly because of the immediately obvious effects. Meanwhile, decidedly nondramatic actions pose potentially greater long-range threats. One such subtle or nondramatic action would be the intentional introduction of invasive species that would be capable of markedly altering functional characteristics of a critical ecological system (e.g., coastal wetlands, interior croplands, and interior waterways). The effects from an insertion of an invasive species might require several years before being realized; and then the costs of containing or rehabilitating the affected ecosystems may be prohibitive. Regulatory procedures to thwart the spread of invasive species vary considerably among jurisdictions. Both the patchwork regulatory status and the relatively poor underlying scientific/technical understanding of invasive potential provide major challenges to managing this problem. Observations from a recent ASTM symposium on invasive species and activities within the ASTM Standards Development process to address this issue are presented.