Section 2

In its report, Recommendations for Bridge and Tunnel Security, the Blue Ribbon Panel provides seven overarching recommendations in three areas-institutional, technical, and fiscal-required to accomplish the goal of reducing the vulnerability of bridges and tunnels to terrorist attacks. Recognizing that current design codes do not contain substantive information on how to employ hardening designs, quantify blast-related demands, and determine the capacity of components exposed to high-pressure transients, the report provides R&D recommendations for creating empirically validated computational tools, design methods, and hardening technologies.

R&D Security Workshop

FHWA held a workshop at TFHRC on March 3, 2004, to develop a strategic framework for R&D to improve security, focusing on highways and with an emphasis on longer range and more fundamental research needs. The product of this workshop was an unprioritized list of gaps and needs to help shape FHWA's strategic plan for R&D.

The workshop focused on three areas. The objective of each area was to identify gaps in current knowledge and technology that may prevent us from securing the Nation's highway system. The first area focused on reducing the vulnerability of the Nation's highway system to attack, the second focused on reducing the risk of the highway system being used as a means to attack, and the third focused on improving the utility of the highway system to respond to and recover from an attack.

A total of 34 participants, representing a very broad cross section of disciplines, agencies, offices, and stakeholders, were invited to the workshop. Attendees included:

David Albright
New Mexico DOT

P.N. Balaguru
National Science Foundation

Rick Capka
Federal Highway Administration

Steven Chase
Federal Highway Administration

Ray Daddazio
Weidlinger Associates, Inc.

Fred Ducca
Federal Highway Administration

Sheila Rimal Duwadi
Federal Highway Administration

Steven L. Ernst
Federal Highway Administration

Brian Gardner
Federal Highway Administration

John Gerner
Federal Highway Administration

Monica Gourdine
Federal Highway Administration

Martin W. Hargrave
Federal Highway Administration

Amy Houser
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, R&T

John Hoyt
Department of Homeland Security

Jeremy Isenberg
Weidlinger Associates, Inc.

Steve Jordan
Woodward Communications

Denny Judycki
Federal Highway Administration

Eva Lerner Lam
Palisades Consulting Group

Henry Lieu
Federal Highway Administration

Diane Liff
Federal Highway Administration

Michael P. Onder
Federal Highway Administration

Stephan Parker
Transportation Research Board

Vincent Pearce
Federal Highway Administration

Mary Lou Ralls
Texas DOT

James Ray
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Tamara Reid
AASHTO

John Rein
Department of Homeland Security

David Smith
Federal Highway Administration

Jim St. Pierre
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Paul Teng
Federal Highway Administration

Maliek van Laar
Woodward Communications

Anthony Welch
Federal Highway Administration

Jeff Western
Wisconsin DOT

Results

These outreach efforts identified a variety of needs, research studies, and focus areas for securing our highways. As noted earlier, the needs assessment had an "all hazards" focus dealing with bridges and structures, while the work of the Blue Ribbon Panel concentrated on security issues and only those associated with bridges and tunnels, and the workshop concentrated on securing all highway transportation systems. Only those issues dealing with bridges and structures and with a security focus have been evaluated in developing the long-term program presented in this report. A summary of information resulting from the needs assessment, the Blue Ribbon Panel, and the workshop are given in appendixes A, B, and C, respectively.