America’s transportation systems are predicated on economic, social, and political stability. After the epiphany of September 11, and subsequent national alerts, however, all sectors of transportation, not just in the USA, but around the world have become keenly aware of the vulnerabilities inherent in such systems; and of the cascading consequences that can arise from attacks at critical nodes in any one or more of the transportation sectors. Critical infrastructure protection can be enhanced significantly through better and more routine use of intelligence extracted from real time, time sequential, and archival images obtained by aerial and satellite sensors. Since we cannot, and probably never would, re-engineer current transportation infrastructures to harden them against random attacks, planners can use image-derived intelligence to redesign their information and decision support systems to detect, prepare, prevent, protect, and respond to incidents. In many instances technology already exists to begin these redesigns, but before 9/11 there was little incentive to invest in the effort. Measures that were once difficult to justify as protection against acts of nature are now justifiable as protection against deliberate acts of aggression. These measures, once learned and implemented, will be applicable to both natural and deliberate incidents.
Critical infrastructure protection decision support system decision model : overview and quick-start user's guide.
