NCJ Number
236402
Date Published
September 2006
Length
47 pages
Annotation
This report from the New Jersey Department of Transportation establishes a simple security checklist to enable officials to perform accurate security assessments of individual bridges within the State.
Abstract
This report details information about what bridge inspectors should be looking for when conducting bridge security assessments and what needs to be included in a bridge security checklist to assist inspectors in their assessments. A review of the literature found a lack of information in three areas: on developing methods for identifying critical bridges for security hazards; on engineering standards and guidelines for bridge security design in order to reduce their vulnerability to attacks; and on understanding the structural response of key components of a bridge in order to mitigate bridge collapse, loss of life, and disruption of traffic. Following this review, a comprehensive security checklist was developed to provide inspectors with the ability to conduct on-site assessments of bridge security. The checklist is tablet pc-based and is in an easy to use drop-down format. The checklist was not included in this report. The report details the main objectives of this project: establish security hazard levels and performance objectives for NJ bridges; identify critical components in a typical ridge that are vulnerable to blast and impact loads; develop a simple bridge security checklist to perform on-site assessment of bridge components based on the results of the first two tasks; and develop a tablet pc-based program to utilize the security checklist. Tables, figures, and references