Critical Infrastructure and Power

Intelligence Practical Exercise

Geospatial Intelligence Analysis

GEOINT which means Geospatial Intelligence is a system which is used to analyse an environment for intelligence and operational purposes. (GEOINT Analysis, 2017).

Describe the Environment: Collect key data that defines the precise destination for the planned mission. Geographical, government and cultural limitations must be established. In most cases, the gathered data could consist of vectors, heights, natural landmarks such as rivers, mountains etc., longitude and latitude locations and several others. All these are the basic requirements of the GEOINT invention.

Outline the Effects of The Environment: Elaborate thoroughly on the mission location identified in the previous step. Locate and define its natural state, any existing structures and its cultural atmosphere. Account for all possible factors that might have an effect on a mission in the location such as roads, people, buildings, plants, climate, language, government, cultural divides or social factors. Add this new information to the basics inputted in Step 1.

iii. Examines Possible Dangers: Also input intelligence and possible dangers, identified by the various surveillance sources, to the previous information steps above. These new data could be: strength of enemy or danger, fighting style, severity of possible threats, history, ability, resourcefulness and determination of the location's hostiles etc. It is crucial for work together with fellow national security officials in this step.

iv. Make Analytic Inferences: Combine and analyse all the gathered information from Steps 1-3. Derive conclusions from your analysis with focus on creating near-accurate predictions. In this step, it is normal for the analyst to develop models to help predict the next move of the identified threats, just how severe these actions could be and the efficiency of the safeguards in place against them.

1. What parts of the D.C. Metro track are high-probability targets and what are the reasons for this?

The National Mall houses, the Smithsonian station and this metro line has one of its destinations as the White House, America's seat of power. Due to this, it is safe to say this station, out of all the locations and structures housed by the National Mall, is a high probability target for terrorists. The estimated position of this station is 38.89' N, 77.03' W.

A previous instance where a metro station was attacked is the Belgium's Maalbeek station incident which occurred on the 22nd March, 2016. These acts of terror which targeted the Brussels airport and a popular metro indicated an alarming safety problem for Asians and Westerners alike. More specifically, the dangers posed by radical jihad groups and the concurrent increase in religious extremist activities, has become a huge problem for the world's leaders. This challenge is even more pronounced in European nations as well as North America as these two regions have recently witnessed a steep rise in the rate of radicalisation of their Islamic residents (Ali Rathore, 2016).

2. How best should we consider the D.C. power station problems and what are the reasons for this?

A very effective move should include an in-depth consideration of the capability of an enemy in acquiring the blueprints of a public infrastructure and analyse this to locate the less guarded areas in its design. One of the recovered Al Qaeda's training documents clearly states: "By exploiting free information sources without any illegal input, over 80% knowledge about the enemy can be gotten." We can say this in our own words as: "There is a high possibility of compiling over 80% of the knowledge we need to put into action an extremely violent attack on a public infrastructure from common free sources." People who have gone through basic courses on discrete optimizations can immediately identify the crucial flaw in this mentality (Brown, Carlyle, Salmeron, & Wood, 2005). After identifying the problems in the normal military actions, we have discovered that the problems faced by civilians are quite different.

i. Just about every non-military American agent is a soft target for monitoring and violence and is therefore in danger;

ii. Notwithstanding the severity of the suffered harm, it's only a matter of time before we regain our strength and re-build iii. Military personnel can better predict the possibility of an attack while homeland-security officials might not be.

Therefore, it is important to focus on what is actually likely, instead of considering the opinions gotten from prejudiced analyses.

a. Possible Attack on the North Power Plant

We can deduce from the information we gathered that the power plant is sited on the shoreline of the Anacostia River. It is also clear from the Police maps studied, that this particular water body marks the boundary between the districts 5 & 6. Thus, if an attack should be launched from the river, there might be a period of uncertainty as to which district's police force is in charge of the emergency notwithstanding if an appropriate alarm is made or not. As this confusion could go on for around 2 -- 3 minutes, jihadists have all the time they need to unleash all the mayhem they planned to.

The situation favours the aggressors as this problem goes against most military laws and theories due to the irregular conditions this battle possesses i.e. the defenders have to shield a large and diverse number of targets while the aggressors simply needs to locate a small location where their actions would exert maximum harm (Brown, Carlyle, Salmeron, & Wood, 2005). If the aggressors succeed in carrying out an attack, emergency personnel might be faced with a novel set of challenges. Quick actions must be taken by the engineer present to reduce the harmful effects of the attack. Other responses could be the assignment of military forces by the government to help take out the hostiles thus forestalling more destruction and preventing the on-site emergency personnel from harm. It is equally important that these responses are well organized (International Nuclear Safety Group, 2010).

b. Possible Attack on the South Power Plant

The South Power Plant is also sited close to the Anacostia River's shoreline just like the North Power Plant. Similarly, police districts 1 and 7 are also separated by the river. Furthermore, these sites have areas that could serve as easy hiding places for the extremists. For instance, the Conley Bottom Park is situated right within the Buzzard Point area while a fishing port is located at a very small distance from the power plant. These two locations are very convenient and safe refuges for the aggressors.

Suggestions for Safety on the Power Plants

The executives in charge of the operating company are fully responsible for welfare and protection (International Nuclear Safety Group, 2010).

i. Welfare and protection should be an important issue right from the initial development phases such as structure location, layout, management and decommissioning. Every inbuilt process and mechanisms should be built with adequate emphasis on welfare and protection in order to maximize all aspects of the process. Furthermore, a well-defined process should be implemented so that any form of design, location or process modification must be well analysed so that they do not cause welfare or protection problems.

ii. The management processes should analyse the standard security and welfare conditions and make sure they are all met. These standards should be monitored by efficient collaboration between the welfare and security officials and both teams should be constantly reminded of their aim, which is, to reduce adverse effects on the community.

3. What D.C. police districts house the power stations and the high probability metro stations and what effect does this have?

S. No

Possible targets

Police District

Effects

1

North Power Plant

5 / 6

2 -- 3 minutes reaction delay

2

South Power Plant

1 / 7

2 -- 3 minutes reaction delay

3

Smithsonian Station

1

No identified significant effects

4. What are the best sensor types that should be used in alerting people of a possible attack on the power stations and metro stations? Pragmatically, how will they be located? How efficient is remote sensing in this situation?

a. Despite our best efforts, terror attacks cannot be fully foreseen, notwithstanding, we need to make an effort towards preventing them. One way of doing this is via planting chemical sensors in mobile devices. When sensors suitable for monitoring and measurements at metro stations were analysed, RAID-S, an ion mobility spectrometer developed by BRUKERSAXONIA GmbH was considered the best and most effective in carrying out needed tasks like detecting a wide range of dangerous chemicals and determining just their severity (Kadlcack, Matousek, & Ungenamm).

Agents

i. Nerve-affecting agents (GD, GB, GA, VX),

ii. Blister-causing agents (L, HD)

iii. Normal toxic substances (CG, CK, AC)

Detection range

i. Nerve-affecting agents I x 10-1 mg/L

ii. Blister-causing agents 6 x 10-5 mg/L

iii. Normal toxic substances I x 10-3 mg/L.

Response Velocity: The response velocity should be 5 -- 30 seconds for the limiting solution strength

b. The sensors are programmed to identify the potentially dangerous situations based on the agent's distribution speed and the possibility to identify situations higher than the safe limits (Kadlcack, Matousek, & Ungenamm). While selecting appropriate detectors and system layouts, these yardsticks should be considered;

i. Range of agents to be identified

ii. The allowed boundaries for the identified agents iii. The detection speed for identified agents

iv. Automated sensor control

v. Transfer of gathered sensor data

vi. Feasibility of connecting sensor to an established network.

vii. Basic management and security viii. Little technical knowledge needed for installation of sensors on the metro facility

ix. Zero effect of sensors on the metro's normal activities

x. Safe running of the monitoring system and all its functions alongside the regular traffic monitoring processes.

xi. Chances of further improvement and upgrade

c. Limitations in current Remote Sensing technology

Boosting the collaboration between transportation geospatial systems should be considered as top priority. Of recent, people trying to employ transportation databases for one reason or the other are often faced with restrictions on access and use. The details about the country's transportation systems and structures are available in several database locations and they occur in a wide variety of forms and programs. A large number of these databases cannot be easily operated and this could cause problems when they are needed for emergencies. Another additional difficulty is the absent operating rules for information sharing and running of software and hardware (Williamson, 2002). The use of land sensing equipment was not considered in this analysis. The remaining two sensing methods are elaborated next.

Air-borne sensing

Trends identified via thorough examination of geospatial data could give ideas of methods for reacting to threats from terrorists as well as to prevent attacks. When this data is combined with general information i.e. boundaries, water bodies and others, it can be used to break up and restrict attacks. Sensors mounted on airplanes give analysts a broad area to study thoroughly while terrestrial mechanisms are focused on closer monitoring of day-to-day occurrences. Every sector of remote sensing has several advantages for transportation systems and thus, will help improve the safety of the myriad and advanced transportation networks across the nation (Williamson, 2002).

Spatial sensing

Certain novel digital mechanisms employ a process called "data mining" which is defined as the quick three-dimensional and sequential evaluation of imaging and non-imaging sensor results in order to create efficient and appropriate threat examination. The process of combining and examining data which have sequential and three-dimensional similarities helps to identify possible danger sources, classify possible terrorist targets and develop proper replies. Emergency personnel need present and up-to-date geospatial data which is easily accessible from interoperable databases. Current remotely sensed images helps these personnel make adequate response plans to natural disasters, terrorist attacks etc. It is proper for every emergency personnel to have accurate, high resolution images of most major structures which terrorists could consider as a target as this will enable them provide help to victims and other emergency groups if there is an attack. This imagery will also be effective for natural disaster cases (Williamson, 2002).