Committee for Oversight and Assessment of Blast-effects and Related Research's Books

The Blast Mitigation for Structures Program (BMSP) is a research and development activity conducted by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to improve the performance of buildings that are targets of terrorist attack. The primary goal of the BMSP is to reduce loss of life and injuries to the occupants of these buildings through the development of innovative techniques for new structures and retrofitting existing facilities. The committee's findings and recommendations are contained in this initial assessment report.

Concerned with the vulnerability of U.S. civilian and military personnel to terrorist bombing attacks, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Defense to undertake a comprehensive research and testing program aimed at protecting people in buildings from such attacks. The Blast Mitigation for Structures Program (BMSP) was initiated in 1997 and has produced a large volume of experimental and analytical data that will permit the design of new, more robust buildings as well as the development of methods to retrofit a large number of vulnerable existing structures. This report reviews the BMSP program and investigates a process that would use existing institutional infrastructures (i.e., building code and standards-writing organizations, professional and technical organizations, universities, and research centers) to disseminate knowledge.

Protecting buildings and their occupants from biological and chemical attacks to ensure continuous building operations is seen as an urgent need in the Department of Defense, given recent technological advances and the changing threats. Toward this end, the Department of Defense established the Immune Building Program to develop protective systems to deter biological and chemical attacks on military facilities and minimize the impacts of attacks should they occur. At the request of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the National Research Council convened a committee to provide guiding principles for protecting buildings from airborne biological or chemical threat agents and outline the variables and options to consider in designing building protection systems. This report addresses such components of building protection as building design and planning strategies; heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems; filtration; threat detection and identification technologies; and operational responses. It recommends that building protection systems be designed to accommodate changing building conditions, new technologies, and emerging threats. Although the report's focus is on protection of military facilities, the guiding principles it offers are applicable to protection of public facilities as well.

In November 1999, GSA and the U.S. Department of State convened a symposium to discuss the apparently conflicting objectives of security from terrorist attack and the design of public buildings in an open society. The symposium sponsors rejected the notion of rigid, prescriptive design approaches. The symposium concluded with a challenge to the design and security professions to craft aesthetically appealing architectural solutions that achieve balanced, performance-based approaches to both openness and security. In response to a request from the Office of the Chief Architect of the Public Buildings Service, the National Research Council (NRC) assembled a panel of independent experts, the Committee to Review the Security Design Criteria of the Interagency Security Committee. This committee was tasked to evaluate the ISC Security Design Criteria to determine whether particular provisions might be too prescriptive to allow a design professional "reasonable flexibility" in achieving desired security and physical protection objectives.

Book's by Committee for Oversight and Assessment of Blast-effects and Related Research

Blast Mitigation for Structures

Blast Mitigation for Structures

Protecting People and Buildings from Terrorism

Protecting People and Buildings from Terrorism

Protecting Building Occupants and Operations from Biological and Chemical Airborne Threats

Protecting Building Occupants and Operations from Biological and Chemical Airborne Threats

ISC Security Design Criteria for New Federal Office Buildings and Major Modernization Projects

ISC Security Design Criteria for New Federal Office Buildings and Major Modernization Projects

Protecting People and Buildings from Terrorism

Protecting People and Buildings from Terrorism

Blast Mitigation for Structures

Blast Mitigation for Structures

Blast Mitigation for Structures

Blast Mitigation for Structures

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