Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Counter-terrorism handbook for building owners

From GlobeSt:

Coincidentally with the implementation of the Bloomberg administration’s new construction codes, the Police Department on Wednesday issued a counter-terrorism handbook aimed at owners of medium- and high-risk buildings. The 130-page report is intended to provide guidelines, which are not legally binding, for existing structures as well as future ones. In a preface, Mayor Michael Bloomberg writes that the report “provides sensible guidelines for balancing the important need for security and the realities of urban development.

Prepared by the NYPD’s counter-terrorism bureau, the report, “Engineering Security: Protective Design for High Risk Buildings,” assigns the city’s buildings to either low-, medium- or high-risk categories, and provides recommendations for mitigating these risks. Although it does not identify any specific buildings as high-risk, the report says they’re structures which present several risk factors at once.

These factors range from location to structural design. They include: high-visibility, nationally recognizable architectural designs; proximity to other high-risk buildings or to major infrastructure; a lack of controlled access; the inability to withstand specific blast pressures at certain distances; maximum occupancy of more than 10,000 people or height greater than 800 feet; and key financial or government tenants.

During a presentation at NYPD headquarters on Wednesday, police commissioner Raymond Kelly told building owners that they could access a self-scoring system to determine their own properties’ risk levels. Most buildings in the city fall within the low-risk category, the report states.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Stroll into ANY police precinct in the city, and see how wide open and vulnerable the place is. They can't even secure their own facilities, and they are going to tell building owners how to secure theirs????