Transport Infrastructure

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Infrastructure is basic physical and organisational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. It can be generally defined as the set of interconnected structural elements that provide framework supporting an entire structure of development.

The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, and so forth, and can be defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions."

In this document, we will only consider transport infrastructure. Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations necessary for transport, and may be roads, railways, airways, waterways, and terminals.

Roads

A road is a paved surface to facilitate the movement of people or goods with [#_Road_transport road transport] means, such as as automobiles, bicycles, buses, vans or trucks.

Roads on itself are not an interesting security target, but blocking a road will cause problems with the traffic flow and reachability of certain parts of the city or area. This can be prevented by designing a [#_Robustness robust road system] and to detect a disruption and minimize the consequences, using [#_Traffic_monitoring monitoring] and [#_Traffic_management_1 traffic management].

Rails

Rails are the infrastructure for [#_Rail_transport rail transport].

As for roads, rails on itself are not an interesting security target, but blocking a railroad will cause large problems with the rail transport.

Pedestrian / Bicycle paths

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Canals, rivers and waterways

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Subway system

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Bridges and fly-overs

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Terminals

A terminal is ...
Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo.

Examples of passenger terminals are airports, railway stations and bus stations.

Examples of terminals for cargo are warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports.

All terminals are important for security, since it are potential targets for terrorists. Damage will have a big impact, both economically, life danger of people and by hampering the transportation process heavily. Therefore it is recommended to have an extensive and robust transportation system towards and from the terminal and to locate terminals outside urban areas.

Airports

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Train station

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Bus terminal

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Freight terminal

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Port

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Traffic intersections

At traffic intersections, a certain type of traffic infrastructure is intersecting. Mostly this concerns road intersections, though also rail and air intersections are possible.

To prevent incidents at road intersections, the traffic can be controlled with traffic signals.

Traffic intersections are an attractive target for terrorists, since damaging an intersection has larger consequences in terms of disrupting the traffic flow and number of possible injuries than for a road segment.

Possible measures to prevent attacks at important intersections are monitoring with cameras and providing sufficient route alternatives.

Criticality of infastructure

General

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Perception of criticality

The systematic analyses of citizens' perceived criticality of infrastructure and neces-sity to protect it is an essential component for the determination of security demands as a public good, also as related to strategic urban planning. A state of the art review leads to the following indicators for citizens’ subjective needs to provide for protection of critical infrastructure, as well as of their over-perception or under-perception of the criticality of that infrastructure.[1]. Knowledge of such kind can for example help urban planners to design in protective measures that not only reflect objective vulnerability but also citizens’ security cultures. Thus, public support for urban planning that is conscious of security aspects can be enhanced and citizens’ acceptance of resulting built infrastruc-ture enhanced.

Footnotes and references

  1. CF. results from the project SFI@SFU: "Development of an Austrian Centre for Comprehensive Security Research at Sigmund Freud Private University Vienna" (http://www.sfi-sfu.eu) in the Austrian national security research programme KIRAS, funded by the Austrian Ministry of Technology, Transport and Innovation (bmvit); project deliverable 2.3: Integrierte Risikobewertungssystematik (comprehensive risk assessment) und subjektive Schutzbedürfnisbewertung für kritische Infrastruktur (not published), p. 98