Secure / Safe

by the WBDG Safe Committee

Last updated: 10-30-2008

Overview

Concrete bollards are integrated into the street design in front of the White House—Washington, DC

The design and construction of safe and secure buildings continues to be the primary goal for owners, architects, engineers, and project managers. Today, in recognizing concern for natural disasters, acts of terrorism, indoor air quality, materials hazards, and fires, the design team must take a multi-hazard approach towards building design that accounts for the potential hazards and vulnerabilities. Applicable multi-hazard events include: bomb threats, terrorist acts, nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological threats, fires, medical emergencies, demonstrations and civil disorders, power failures, spills or leaks of hazardous substances, and natural disasters (hurricanes, tornados, floods, earthquakes, etc.).

Designing buildings for security and safety requires a proactive approach that anticipates—and then protects—the building occupants, resources, structure, and continuity of operations from multiple hazards. The first step in this process is to understand the various threats and the risks they pose. There are a number of defined assessment types to consider that will lead the project team in making security and safety design decisions. This effort identifies the resources or "assets" to be protected, highlights the possible perils or "threats," and establishes a likely consequence of occurrence or "risk." Based on this assessment and analysis, building owners and other invested parties select the appropriate safety measures to implement. Their selection will depend on the security requirements, acceptable levels of risk, the cost-effectiveness of the measures proposed, and the impact these measures have on the design, construction, and use of the building.

Most security and safety measures involve a balance of operational, technical, and physical safety methods. For example, to ensure a given facility is protected from unwanted intruders, a primarily operational approach might stress the deployment of guards around the clock; a primarily technical approach might stress camera surveillance and warning sirens; while a primarily physical approach might stress locked doorways and gateways. In practice, all approaches are usually employed to some degree and a deficiency in one area may be compensated by a greater emphasis in the other two. When they are addressed at the beginning of a project, safety measures can usually be integrated into the total design efficiently and cost-effectively.

Consistent with areas of professional responsibility, it is useful to identify four fundamental principles of multi-hazard building design:

Plan for Fire Protection
Planning for fire protection for a building involves a systems approach that enables the designer to analyze all of the building's components as a total building fire safety system package.
Ensure Occupant Safety and Health
Some injuries and illnesses are related to unsafe or unhealthy building design and operation. These can usually be prevented by measures that take into account issues such as indoor air quality, electrical safety, fall protection, ergonomics, and accident prevention.
Resist Natural Hazards
Each year U.S. taxpayers pay over $35 billion for recovery efforts, including repairing damaged buildings and infrastructure, from the impacts of hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornados, blizzards, and other natural disasters. A significant percentage of this could be saved if our buildings properly anticipated the risk associated with major natural hazards.
Provide Security for Building Occupants and Assets
Effective secure building design involves implementing countermeasures to deter, detect, delay, and respond to attacks from human aggressors. It also provides for mitigating measures to limit hazards and prevent catastrophic damage should an attack occur.

Note: Information in these Secure/Safe pages must be considered together with other design objectives and within a total project context in order to achieve quality, high performance buildings.

Related Issues

Information Sensitivity

As a result of the heightened level of interest in homeland security following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the public is even more interested in efforts to protect people, buildings, and operations from disasters. This presents both benefits and challenges, because much of the same information that can be used to gather support for mitigation can also be of use to potential terrorists, saboteurs, or others with malevolent intent. For that reason, project delivery teams must carefully maintain the security of any information that pertains to vulnerabilities, particularly when the building is part of a critical infrastructure or system. Per Department of Homeland Security (DHS), critical infrastructure is defined as "the assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, public health or safety, or any combination thereof." Legal counsel should be obtained on how best to protect such sensitive information from unauthorized use within the provisions of applicable local, state, and federal laws.

Balancing Safe and Secure Design Requirements

There are times when design requirements addressing all the various threats will pose conflicts in arriving at acceptable design and construction solutions. Examples include Blast Resistive Glazing, which may impede emergency egress in case of fire, and access control measures that prevent intrusion, but may also restrict emergency egress. Good communication between fire protection and security design team specialists through the entire design process is necessary to achieve the common goal of safe and secure buildings.

Renewed Emphasis on Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Threats

Because of increased concern with post 9/11 international terrorism, planners and designers of a wide variety of building types and spaces now consider strategies to mitigate CBR threats. The WBDG page Provide Security for Building Occupants and Assets explains this type of occupant threat and reviews design solutions to mitigate them.

Development and Training on Occupant Emergency Plans

Occupant Emergency Plans should be developed for building Operations staff and occupants to be able to respond to all forms of attacks and threats. Clearly defined lines of communication, responsibilities, and operational procedures are all important parts of Emergency Plans. Emergency Plans are an essential element of protecting life and property from attacks and threats by preparing for and carrying out activities to prevent or minimize personal injury and physical damage. This will be accomplished by pre-emergency planning; establishing specific functions for Operational staff and occupants; training Organization personnel in appropriate functions; instructing occupants of appropriate responses to emergency situations and evacuation procedures; and conducting actual drills.

Emerging Issues

Building Information Modeling (BIM) can be a useful tool for building security. For example, intelligent objects in 3D provide better understanding of vulnerabilities and better correlation with other design aspects like building and site access, location and types of doors and windows, and structural design characteristics for seismic versus blast design. BIM will further the integration between project team members, design disciplines, and the various stages of a project to achieve the goal of a high performance building.

Major Resources

WBDG