The assessment of the attractiveness of process facilities to terrorist attacks

Abstract Acts of interference against facilities of the process industry might result in severe consequences in case of a successful attack (major explosions, fires, toxic dispersions or environmental contamination). Although protection measures are usually in place to resist intrusion and process industry sites are mostly well equipped to meet emergencies, the security of industrial sites, and in particular of chemical and petro-chemical facilities, has become a matter of increasing concern in recent years. In the present study, a semi-quantitative methodology for the assessment of industrial facilities attractiveness with respect to malicious acts of interference was presented. The methodology considers two main aspects as targeting incentives. The first is related to the plant hazard potential, i.e. the potential of causing severe damage to population in case of successful attack leading to a major accident in the facility. The second aspect is the perceived value that a target may have for a specific threat. A set of relevant specification elements influencing the targeting logic were identified, considering socio-political and strategic elements, and scoring criteria were established to estimate the attractiveness increase due to the perceived value of the target to the threat. A set of case studies, drawn on the features of existing installations, was used to exemplify the procedure for attractiveness assessment. The methodology demonstrated the importance of considering both technical and socio-political aspects, as well as ideological and strategic incentives to an attack, for a holistic determination of plant attractiveness.