The focus of this volume is the comparative analysis of technological and intelligence terrorism. Technological terrorism is the unauthorized impact on complex technical systems intending to breakdown protection systems, initiate secondary catastrophic processes (possibly caused by hazardous substances, power, or information stored or processed at a facility), and inflict secondary damages and losses outside the facility boundaries. Intelligent terrorism (or highly-sophisticated insiders terrorism), in contrast, is unauthorized purposeful interference into processes of design, construction, or maintenance of complex technical systems aimed at increasing existing vulnerabilities or creating new ones. These vulnerabilities, insider's knowledge about the system, and access to its elements are used for triggering most disastrous scenarios of a terrorist attack.

Approaches to grappling with technological terrorism and with intelligence terrorism differ. The approach to grappling with technological terrorism involves a study of the vulnerabilities of complex technical systems, potential sources of secondary catastrophic processes, and weaknesses of safety barriers. The most effective scenarios of attack need to be identified because at its root, technological terrorism makes use of vulnerabilities that are inherent to the complex technical system. This means identifying powerful initiating impacts that have the possibility of breaching safety system, and assessing scenario trees to determine the most disastrous scenario with severe secondary losses.

In contrast, the approach to grappling with intelligence terrorism involves a vulnerability assessment of a system under design, construction, or operation with respect to scenarios of terrorist impacts, leading to identification the most critical failure scenario. This consideration must include insertion of latent changes into the system at the stage of its design, construction or operation to create new vulnerabilities to be exploited by technological terrorism; disconnection or disruption of a complex technical system monitoring system and safety barriers; “weak” impacts that use complex technical systems vulnerabilities for initiating the most disastrous failure scenario that can be achieved by bringing the system into critical or supercritical states, at which point even “weak” initial impacts can trigger cascading failures.

The specific features of risks related to attacks of technological and intelligence terrorism at complex technical systems are determined by the ability of terrorists to make a rational selection of attack scenarios. This selection is based on the capability of terrorists to assess vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the complex technical systems, and estimate potential losses inflicted by attacks of different scenarios. This constitutes a strong feedback between vulnerabilities towards attack scenarios and expected consequences or outcomes, on the one side, and terrorist hazard on the other side. The main challenge is to describe intentions of terrorists, their preferences and the system of values (i.e., utility functions). It is also important that terrorist can choose the time and place of an attack, adapt to changes of safety barriers and defense strategies and learn lessons from previous attacks.

Due to the above assessment, terrorist risk is a problem with intrinsic human and behavioral dimension. Therefore it requires a new set of mathematical modeling tools, and a more substantial input from human and social sciences than is the case with natural and anthropogenic hazards. Assessment of the risk of technological terrorism and intelligence terrorism attacks must be conducted in a game oriented manner that treats terrorist values, intentions and resources related to selecting the attack scenarios, as well as values, resources, and motivations of the antiterrorist forces.

Estimating terrorist risk for complex technical systems has primarily been a carried out using non-behavioral, physical engineering methods. It is now acknowledged that this approach needs input from other disciplines. There is a dangerous disconnect among professionals from multiple disciplines that are involved in designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, and managing complex technical systems. To address the issue of technological and intelligence terrorism, a comprehensive approach is required. There is a need to bring together specialists representing engineering and social sciences. The human dimension is critical for addressing terrorist problems in general and intelligence terrorism in particular. It is necessary to assess intentions of terrorists, their system of values, and their physical and intellectual resources.

The objective of the Workshop on ‘Comparative Analysis of Technological and Intelligent terrorism Impacts on Complex Technical Systems’ was to lay the foundation for a risk-informed approach to modeling, analyzing, managing, and controlling complex technical systems in the face of terrorist attacks. It is necessary to combine the insights of a spectrum of disciplines across engineering, human and social sciences, and economics.

The workshop focused on the urgent need to develop an understanding for the behaviors and vulnerabilities of complex technical systems; create a risk-informed analysis capability for modeling and predicting the behavior of complex technical systems; and apply emerging technology to the problems of designing, constructing, monitoring, and operating complex technical systems taking into account the possibility of sophisticated terrorist attack.

The goal of the workshop has been to develop an understanding of vulnerabilities of complex technical systems to various scenarios of terrorist attacks. Such understanding can reduce vulnerabilities and contain or limit the propagation of failure within a complex technical system in case of terrorist attack, thus limiting the impact of terrorism. This will also lead to development of a set of design criteria and design codes that should take into account possible scenarios of terrorist attacks at complex technical systems. Areas of further research have been identified, along with opportunities for future exchange and collaboration, a project team can be created.

Nikolay A. Makhutov

Gregory B. Baecher