National Strategy for Protecting the Infrastructure: A Visionary Approach
Abstract
Does the August 2003 power outage in the Northeastern United States and Canada indicate how vulnerable our critical national infrastructure is to failure? This SRP addresses such concerns about the viability of our critical national infrastructure using dams as a case study. The question therefore becomes how the nation should protect infrastructure whose destruction or dysfunction poses a threat to our citizens not from terrorism but rather from years of maintenance neglect. This SRP considers the vulnerability of the nation's infrastructure from this broader perspective and offers a visionary approach to resource allocation to deal with the challenges facing our infrastructure. This paper will briefly review the Critical Infrastructure Strategy and illustrate how it falls short of achieving a more secure infrastructure because the ways chosen are insufficient to bring about the ends. The focus is on the resource allocation process since it is arguably the most important of the common ways to fully leverage investments in infrastructure. Dams serve as an excellent case study because of their complexities including ownership issues access to funding and current material condition and age. Finally how the proposal can be implemented within the federal budget.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 19, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA423936
Entities
People
- Andrew Turnley
Organizations
- United States Army War College