Gordon Smith

I’m Gordon Smith, manager of the Contraband Detection and Civilian Physical Surety Technologies Department.

(Slide)

I’ll be talking to you about architectural surety and physical terrorism. Architectural surety refers to the application of surety to the buildings and structures that we occupy and depend upon. Physical terrorism refers to acts of terrorism that are directed against people and the buildings and structures that they occupy and depend upon.

These two areas are tied together by their emphasis on physical structures and the synergy that results between them. The application of surety in one area frequently has surety benefits in the other area. Terrorist bombings are an example of this complement between architectural surety and physical terrorism. In a terrorist bombing most of the deaths and injuries result from flying debris and building collapse rather than the direct effects of the bomb itself. If we can improve the bomb resistance of buildings we can greatly reduce the resulting casualties.

For our nuclear weapons modeling work we have developed computer codes which will more accurately predict the effects of explosions on structures. Also from our computer work and our nuclear weapons work in materials research, we’re studying the fracture of glass to try to develop more benign glass. Imagine if you will–admittedly a long-term project–a windowpane that turns back to sand when an explosion hits it.

Our goal is to develop bomb-resistant technologies which are both more cost efficient and which maintain the livability of our buildings. These bomb-resistant technologies also apply to architectural surety. They can be applied to buildings to help them resist the effects of natural disaster such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

The emerging chemical and biological threat is another example of the synergy between architectural surety and physical terrorism. Sandia has developed computer codes to model the transport of chem-bio agents both inside and outside of buildings.

We’ve developed virtual reality tools, which provide realistic training to those people who’d have to respond to a chem-bio agent. We’re working on faster, better, cheaper chem-bio sensors, and on ways to use a building's own systems such as the fire sprinklers to mitigate a chem-bio attack, and to decontaminate and recover a building for use following a chem-bio incident. These chem-bio technologies also have a place in architectural surety in the event of a major fire or an accidental chemical release like the one that occurred in Bhopal, India a number of years ago.

Safety is the second aspect of surety that applies to architectural surety. We have developed instrumentation to assess the health of structures. While currently we need to have that instrumentation in place on structures such as the Interstate 40 bridge in Albuquerque, I’d like to take you on a journey to the future. The future is Star Trek. You may recall that Dr. McCoy had tricorder. He could take that tricorder and put it up next to a person and rapidly assess the health of that individual.

Imagine–again admittedly a long term project–a structural health tricorder that you could put next to a building and rapidly assess its health. Imagine the benefits of prioritizing for repair the large number of our bridges that are deteriorating, or of rapidly assessing the ability of a building to resist the affects of natural disasters or to resist the affects of a terrorist bombing.

Reliability is the third area of surety that applies to architectural surety. At first glance this may not seem to be the case. I don’t remember the last time I was in a building whose reliability failed me. However, where the physical infrastructure is concerned reliability is certainly an issue. Jennifer Nelson had earlier discussed the many severe consequences caused by a power grid failure in Auckland, New Zealand. Imagine if we had structural health monitoring on those power cables before they failed, and if we repaired or replaced them. We could have avoided all those negative consequences.

Lastly I’d like to talk about two area that tie together safety, security and reliability for architectural surety and physical terrorism. The first are the risk management methodologies that come out of our nuclear reactor work. Even as I’m speaking Sandia is using those same methodologies to identify and prioritize risks in safety, security, and reliability for the buildings under the purview of the General Services Administration. Secondly we have an ongoing educational effort in architectural surety. We’ve sponsored an architectural conference; we’ve taught a graduate architectural surety class at the University of New Mexico; and we've sponsored several seminars with architects and engineers on architectural surety.

Unfortunately the current state of surety for architectural surety and physical terrorism appears to be mostly level 1 with some level 2 where active human intervention is required. I’m confident that our subgroup will come up with some great ideas to move us to level 3 and ultimately to level 4. This would get us to the point that, when an emergency occurs, people will run into buildings rather than running out of them. Thank you

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