Lecture 2 - Risk Assessment and Societal Infrastructure

What is Canada’s history of terrorist attacks?

• 1960s: Sons of Freedom, over a 4-year period, blew up railway tracks, hydro towers and other industrial and government targets in the province

• 1970s: October Crisis precipitated by the FLQ

• 1982: Direct Action, bombed the Litton Industries plant in Toronto and assassinated Turkish military Col. in Ottawa

• 1985: Attack on the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa by an Armenian-Canadian terror cell

• 1985: Bombing of Air India flight 182

What is the risk assessment triangle?

Exhibits that risk results from a combination of an asset, threat/hazard, and a vulnerability

What is risk exposure?

• The factor of impact and probability

  • Impact/Probability = # of threat level

• Impact takes precedence over likelihood

What are critical infrastructure sectors (assets) in Canada?

• Energy and utilities

• Communications and information technology

• Finance

• Health care

• Food

• Water

• Transportation

• Safety

• Government

• Manufacturing

What are the 5 key questions for threat and vulnerability?

• What situations/conditions expose the assets to harm?

• What situations/conditions could be exploited?

• How exposed is the asset by this condition?

• How easy or difficult is it to exploit?

• What does a threat agent need to exploit the vulnerability?

What are the different types of terrorist threats?

• Domestic

• International

What is domestic terrorism?

• Involved groups or individuals whose terrorist activities are directed at elements of our government or population without foreign direction

  • Difficult to prevent

  • Less predictable

  • Inspired by extremist beliefs, or by real and imagined grievances

  • Radicalized citizens

What is international terrorism?

• Groups or individuals whose terrorist activities are foreign-based and/or directed by countries or groups outside a country or whose activities transcend national boundaries

• Activities include:

  • Develop potential cells in Canada

  • Logistics development and raising

  • Arranging transit to/from other countries

  • Providing a safe-haven

What is included in the threat event spectrum?

• Cyber threats

• Criminal activity

• Disease

• Accidents

• Natural disasters

• Hostile activity

• Insurgency

• Terrorism

• Sabotage

• Subversion

• Espionage

• Civil Disturbance

What are the 4 key questions for what do you protect against?

• What could harm the asset (events)?

• Who or what could cause this (agents)?

• How could this happen (scenarios)?

• How likely will this happen (threat level)?

What are the 5 goals of National Biodefense Strategy?

• Enable risk awareness to inform decision-making across the biodefense enterprise

• Ensure biodefence capabilities to prevent bioincidents

• Ensure biodefence enterprise preparedness to reduce the impacts of bioincidents

• Rapidly respond to limit the impact of bioincidents

• Facilitate recovery to restore the community, the economy, and the environment after a bioincident

What are the concerns regarding synthetic biology?

• Recreating known pathogenic viruses

• Making existing bacteria more dangerous

• Making harmful biochemicals via in situ synthesis

What are biological weapons?

• Qualify as weapons of mass destruction

• Have the potential to injure or kill thousands of people in a single incident

• Spread fear and panic

• Considered a force multiplier

Why use weapons of mass destruction?

• Enormous publicity

• Not just another assassination, kidnapping, bombing, or hijacking

What are the advantages of biological WMD?

• Easy to manufacture

• Easy to deliver

• Very lethal in small amounts

• Incubation period reduces detections

• Often undetectable

• Few forensic signatures

• Legitimate businesses can be used as cover for bioweapon production

• Generates fear

What about agricultural agents?

• Agents not hazardous to perpetrators

• Few technical obstacles to weaponization

• Low security targets

• Low moral barrier

• Maximum effect with low input

• Point source mimics natural introduction

• Multi-point source outbreaks can be created by targeting imported seed, feed, or fertilizers

What are the economic impacts?

• Loss of money in trade

• Cleanup

• Patient treatment

What are the levels of escalation?

• Natural outbreak

• Accidental release

• Biocrime

• Bioterrorism

• Biowarfare

What is the infectious disease equation?

Virus + host = infected host → recovery or death

In the US, what are the teams of bioterrorist agent expertise?

• Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation

• Department of Homeland Security

• Department of State

• Department of War

What is PHAC?

• Public Health Agency of Canada

• Federal department that deals with public health, emergency preparedness, and response to infectious and chronic disease control and prevention

What are PHAC’s responsibilities?

• Developing and maintaining national emergency response plans

• Managing the Quarantine Service

• Developing lab protocols for testing potential biologic terrorism agents

• Developing protocols and rapid diagnostic tests for bioterrorist agents and providing these tests to the Canadian Public Health Lab Network

• Acting as the focal point for Canada’s National Emergency Response assistance plan for the transportation of Human Risk Group IV agents

• Working with provinces, territories, and local public health authorities to ensure front-line health workers have the tools to identify and deal with an event requiring emergency medical supplies

What are relevant Canadian laws to biocrome?

• Human Pathogens and Toxins Act (HPTA): establish a safety and security regime to protect the health and safety of the public against the risks posed by human pathogens and toxins

• Human Pathogens and Toxins Regulations HPTR: set out a risk-based licensing scheme for facilities conducting controlled activities with human pathogens and toxins

What are pathogen safety data sheet?

• Technical documents describing hazardous properties of a human pathogen

• Produced by PHAC as educational and informational resources

• Very similar to MSDS

What are the PHAC risk groups?

• 1: unlikely to cause disease, low risk

• 2: moderate risk to cause disease, low community risk, unlikely to be a serious hazard

• 3: serious disease, high risk, can result in economic consequences, but not ordinarily spread

• 4: very serious, readily transmitted

What is Canada’s biosafety and biosecurity?

• Level 4 lab facilities are aware of containment issues and protection of workers and against release but not necessarily theft

• Biological community needs to come to a balance between monitoring and not obstructing legitimate research and development

How are infectious disease related to wildlife?

• Humans + wildlife may = zoonotic disease transmission

• Insects are reservoirs, animals as well

• Transmission schemes are variable

What are category A agents?

• Organisms and toxins that pose the highest risk to the public and national security

  • Be easily spread or transmitted from person to person

  • Result in high death rates and have potential for major health impact

  • Could cause extreme concern and social disruption

  • Require special action for public health prepardness

What are category B agents?

• Second-highest priority agents

  • Moderately easy to disseminate

  • Result in moderate morbidity rates and low mortality rates

  • Require specific enhancements of CDC’s diagnostic capacity of enhanced disease surveillance

What are category C agents?

• Third highest priority agents include emerging pathogens that could be engineered for mass dissemination in the future

  • Availability

  • Ease of production and dissemination

  • Potential for high morbidity and mortality rates and major health impact

What are the biological warfare events that have happened in the past?

• 14th century: catapulted plague-infected corpses

• 18th century: French and Indian War - Smallpox blankets

• 19th century: Attempted use of smallpox against the Confederate Army

• WWI: The German army developed a strain of anthrax, cholera, and wheat fungus

• WWII: Prisoners contracted plague, anthrax, syphilis, cholera, and typhoid for testing purposes

  • Japan dropped plague-infected fleas over enemy territory

What is a modern example of biological warfare?

• Sept-Oct. 1984, there were 751 reported cases of Salmonella in The Dalles, Oregon

• The group, the Rajneeshees, had infected many salad bars with Salmonella to influence the election by poisoning the voting population

What is the relation between biocrime and food-borne illnesses?

• There are commonly natural outbreaks of food-borne pathogens

• Statistics on these infections are likely inaccurate due to under reporting