Moderator: Joe Scanlon, Carleton University
Recorder: Fred Dilger, Black Mountain Research
Discussants: James Ballard, California State University, Northridge; Michael Foran, U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration; Dave Genova, City of Denver, Colorado; Edd Hauser, University of North Carolina, Charlotte; Alan Nelson, Nuclear Energy Institute; Vince Pearce, U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration
Joe Scanlon opened the session by recognizing that transportation systems play a significant role in hazards research. Vince Pearce indicated that while there may be emergency plans for transportation systems, there may be multiple plans across several agencies and these plans may not be integrated. Additionally, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) requires plans for certain systems. Pearce noted that the trend in evacuation management is toward real-time emergency management and that evacuation plans must be tested in exercises.
Dave Genova stated that Denver, Colorado, has had a great deal of experience with exercises and responses. On September 11, 2001, the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) was confronted with the demand for people to return to their homes and families following the terrorist attacks. RTD ran a reverse peak hour commute immediately on the heels of the peak hour travel. A key conclusion of Genova's presentation was that transit assets are both critical infrastructures as well as critical evacuation assets.
James Ballard addressed the problem of methodological research during these events. He stated that while probabilistic risk techniques are not perfect tools in understanding risks, they have utility. Ballard argued that triangulating methods in hazards research can provide more robust and reliable findings. Ballard cited his recent work on a project for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which involved assessing the potential consequences of terrorist attacks on shipments of spent nuclear fuel. He cited the use of expert panels and modeling as two methods used to make the study conclusions stronger, and concluded by describing the interconnections between the NATO project and the shipments of spent nuclear fuel to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. Ballard also indicated that the past paradigm of risk management for transportation systems is changing in response to the occurrence of human-initiated events.
Edd Hauser described a case study from Charlotte, North Carolina, to update a city emergency response plan. The study began by examining area risks that included major banks and two nuclear power plants. The city created a local alert team to respond to emergencies. However, this team was operating in isolation from other important sources of information. The area began moving toward integrating its response coordination into a regional center as part of an all-hazards approach. This was organized as a high-level executive committee with working groups for smaller communities near the nuclear power plants. Based on the planning from the committees, a new plan, which is currently in draft form, was prepared. The plan includes emergency evacuation priorities for the area and specifically examines the problem of controlling entry and exit from the city.
Alan Nelson stated that the nuclear industry is highly regulated and provides substantial financial support to enhance the emergency management capabilities of the areas surrounding nuclear power plants. He then described the very difficult regulatory tests that spent nuclear fuel casks must endure in order to be licensed. Nelson emphasized that the cask is a key component of system safety. He described how Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) has been used to examine the vulnerability of the casks to various modes of attack. He then indicated that extensive local coordination was an extremely important lesson from previous shipping campaigns. Adopting an all-hazards approach to thinking about the problem is also important. Nelson cited the area around the Duane Arnold nuclear plant as an example of an area with numerous technological challenges that occur within a transportation system. Nelson then described the various memoranda of understanding that have been in place since 1982 to support emergency management planning within the nuclear industry.
Mike Foran began by indicating that most of his time is spent working on emergency response. He then described the Web-based Evacuation Traffic Information System (ETIS) as a resource for people to use in the event of an evacuation. A key feature of ETIS is that it was constructed using the behavioral lessons learned from the hurricane evacuation studies performed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Foran noted that evacuations are a regional problem. People evacuate across jurisdictional borders and it is therefore necessary to consider evacuations at a larger geographic scale. The ETIS system allows for real-time traffic flow information and can be used to indicate contra-flow routes (highways where all traffic lanes are used to move vehicles away from the hazard). Evacuation planning has been used in other kinds of events. For example, during the recent G-8 summit, evacuation planning was used to assess potential problems.
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Updated April 30, 2007