Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-05T11:45:07.154Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Managing for Reliability in an Age of Terrorism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Paul R. Schulman
Affiliation:
Professor Mills College
Emery Roe
Affiliation:
Practicing Policy Analyst California State University, East Bay
Philip E. Auerswald
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Lewis M. Branscomb
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Todd M. La Porte
Affiliation:
George Mason University, Virginia
Erwann O. Michel-Kerjan
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

Imagine a coordinated attack by terrorists striking major electric power transmission lines and facilities in strategic places throughout the American Midwest and Northeast. They are able to knock out more than 250,000 megawatts of peak load electrical capacity and throw more than 50 million people into darkness over a 240,000-km area in the United States and Canada. Without electric power, a variety of other critical services also fail, including water supplies, hospital facilities, and major financial markets all over the globe. Ultimately, security systems are themselves disabled, leaving key infrastructures vulnerable to additional terrorist attacks.

Sound improbable? Many of these conditions actually occurred during the U.S. and Canada blackout of August 14, 2003, caused not by terrorists but by the failure of electric transmission systems themselves. While power was restored quickly in some areas, other portions of major metropolitan centers were without power for more than 24 hours, and some lost service for several days. A report issued in 2002 by a task force headed by former senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman concluded that as a consequence of a coordinated terrorist attack, because of the lack of replacement parts for aged or customized equipment, “acute [power] shortages could mandate rolling blackouts for as long as several years.”

Unprecedented electric power grid failures, information networks under assault by computer viruses and hackers, large-scale transportation systems and water supplies open to terrorist attack, even the prospect of electronic voting exposed to all manner of fraud and undetected error: everywhere our critical infrastructures are vulnerable, “brittle,” and less robust than we had thought.

Type
Chapter
Information
Seeds of Disaster, Roots of Response
How Private Action Can Reduce Public Vulnerability
, pp. 121 - 134
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×