Primer To Design Safe School Projects In Case Of Terrorist Attacks

Provides guidance to protect students, faculty, staff, & their school buildings form terrorist attacks. It also provides guidance to the building science community of architects & engineers working for local institutions on school projects. This document is intended for use by schools who feel that they are at risk from terrorist attacks. It provides necessary guidance to those who desire to increase the performance of their school & related infrastructure. The use of experts to apply the methodologies contained in this document is encouraged. This primer references several sources for additional information, including publications completed by other government agencies, which should be consulted to obtain additional guidance. Color llus.

Provides architects, engineers, and school administrators with the basic principles and techniques to make a school safe from terrorist attacks.

The purpose of this primer is to provide the design community and school administrators with the basic principles and techniques to make a school that is safe from terrorist attacks and at the same time is functional, aesthetically pleasing, and meets the needs of the students, staff, administration, and general public. Protecting a school building and grounds from physical attack is a significant challenge because the ability to design, construct, renovate, operate, and maintain the facility is spread across numerous building users, infrastructure systems, and many building design codes. There is a strong interest in the United States (U.S.) in ensuring the safety of students, faculty, and staff in our schools. Schools are integral parts of their communities. Many schools are used as shelters, command centers, or meeting places in times of crisis. Schools are also used widely for polling and voting functions. In some communities, schools are places of health care delivery. Schools may or may not be the targets of terrorism, but they are certain to be affected by terrorism, whether directly or indirectly. On September 11, 2001, four elementary schools and three high schools located within 6 blocks of the World Trade Center were just beginning classes when the first plane hit the north tower. Thousands of children were exposed to the dust clouds from the collapsing buildings. Even those children not in the immediate vicinity experienced a great deal of anxiety. Children in at least three states (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) had parents working in or around the World Trade Center that day. In the Washington, DC, area, schools faced similar situations after the Pentagon was attacked. Many Americans feel that schools should be the safest place our children can be, perhaps at times even safer than the homes in which they live. Security is not a standalone capability; it is a critical design consideration that should be constantly reviewed and scrutinized from the design phase through construction or rehabilitation and onto building use. The focus of this primer will be on the threats posed by potential physical attacks on a school by terrorists. Attacking schools and school children could be a highly emotional and high profile event. At the time of publication of this primer, there have been no direct terrorist threats against a school known to the public; however, schools could be indirectly threatened by collateral damage from a terrorist attack directed at nearby facilities. Protecting a school against terrorist attack is a challenging task. A school may have considerable vulnerabilities, because of its well defined periods of use, designated access points, storage of sensitive personal information, minimal security forces, and numerous avenues of penetration and escape for attackers. This primer should be used in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 426, Reference Manual to Mitigate Potential Terrorist Attacks Against Buildings, and FEMA 427, Primer for Design of Commercial Buildings to Mitigate Terrorist Attacks. This primer presents an approach to protecting schools at risk from terrorist attacks. The information presented is intended primarily for architects and engineers, or school administrators with a technical background. This publication is designed to meet the needs of all schools, including those with serious security concerns. Because security concerns of individual schools vary greatly, some users with modest security concerns may feel beleaguered by the amount of information and technical approach presented. They should feel free to select the methods and measures that best meet their individual situations while gaining a general appreciation of security concerns and risk management.

Manual contains extensive qualitative design guidance for limiting or mitigating the effects of terrorist attacks, focusing primarily on explosions, but also addressing chemical, biological, and radiological attacks.

Explores the Nexus Formed When Malevolent Actors Access Malignant MeansWritten for professionals, academics, and policymakers working at the forefront of counterterrorism efforts, Jihadists and Weapons of Mass Destruction is an authoritative and comprehensive work addressing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of jihadists,

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has developed this publication, Site and Urban Design for Security: Guidance against Potential Terrorist Attacks, to provide information and design concepts for the protection of buildings and occupants, from site perimeters to the faces of buildings. The intended audience includes the design community of architects, landscape architects, engineers and other consultants working for private institutions, building owners and managers and state and local government officials concerned with site planning and design. Immediately after September 11, 2001, extensive site security measures were put in place, particularly in the two target cities of New York and Washington. However, many of these security measures were applied on an ad hoc basis, with little regard for their impacts on development pat-terns and community character. Property owners, government entities and others erected security barriers to limit street access and installed a wide variety of security devices on sidewalks, buildings, and transportation facilities. The short-term impacts of these measures were certainly justified in the immediate aftermath of the events of September 11, 2001, but traffic patterns, pedestrian mobility, and the vitality of downtown street life were increasingly jeopardized. Hence, while the main objective of this manual is to reduce physical damage to buildings and related infrastructure through site design, the purpose of FEMA 430 is also to ensure that security design provides careful attention to urban design values by maintaining or even enhancing the site amenities and aesthetic quality in urban and semi-urban areas. This publication focuses on site design aimed to protect buildings from attackers using vehicles carrying explosives. These represent the most serious form of attack. Large trucks enable terrorists to carry very large amounts of explosives that are capable of causing casualties and destruction over a range of many hundreds of yards. Perimeter barriers and protective design within the site can greatly reduce the possibility of vehicle penetration. Introduction of smaller explosive devices, carried in suitcases or backpacks, must be prevented by pedestrian screening methods. Site design for security, however, may impact the function and amenity of the site, and barrier and access control design may impact the quality of the public space within the adjacent neighborhood and community. The designer's role is to ensure that public amenity and the aesthetics of the site surroundings are kept in balance with security needs. This publication contains a number of examples in which the security/ amenity balance has been maintained through careful design and collaboration between designers and security experts. Much security design work since September 11, 2001, has been applied to federal and state projects, and these provide many of the design examples shown. At present, federal government projects are subject to mandatory security guidelines that do not apply to private sector projects, but these guidelines provide a valuable information resource in the absence of comparable guidelines or regulations applying to private development. Operations and management issues and the detailed design of access control, intrusion alarm systems, electronic perimeter protection, and physical security devices, such as locking devices, are the province of the security consultant and are not covered here, except as they may impact the conceptual design of the site. Limited information only is provided on some aspects of chemical, biological and radiological (CBR) attacks that are significant for site designers; extensive discussion of approaches to these threats can be found in FEMA 426.