BACKGROUND

The survey is a cooperative effort of the AASHTO Task Force on Transportation Security and the TRB Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection, which focuses on all aspects of critical infrastructure protection. Following the events of September 11, AASHTO formed its Task Force on Transportation Security to encourage states to share information about vulnerability assessment techniques and emergency response and preparedness approaches. The joint AASHTO/TRB survey questionnaire is designed to update information provided by the States in November 2001 on the current state of vulnerability assessment and emergency response.

Benefit to the States

Since 9/11/01, there has been clear evidence that states and localities benefit from sharing information and research on critical issues in security, infrastructure protection, planning, and policy. Each state will have has the opportunity to use the results from this second survey to further assess its individual strengths and vulnerabilities and to join with other states to be better prepared to prevent and respond to events and threats in the future.

OBJECTIVE

The primary objective of this second survey is threefold: (a) to identify current preparedness and emergency response by State Transportation Agencies; (b) to compare current efforts with the baseline established by the initial survey in 2001; and (c) to identify security-related research priorities (Note:to review current security research, please see the document at https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/dva/CRP-Security%20Research.pdf).

The AASHTO Task Force and TRB Committee Task Forces will review the responses and report back to the states.

Note: All responses are confidential and no information from individual states will be released or identified without prior permission.

Status: The results were presented to the AASHTO Special Committee on Transportation Security in preliminary form in January 2004, with a more complete analysis presented to them in August 2004. As with the 2001 survey, there was a 100% response from the states. A slide summary of the 2003 survey is available on the AASHTO web site at https://cms.transportation.org/sites/security/docs/2004Meeting/JodyCambridge.pdf

A follow-up activity is scheduled under project 20-59(14) for 2006-2007.