Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Reduction of Water Supply Systems

One of the concerns about future and existing dams is its safety and the possibility of serious accidents including the dam failure, chemical and biological terrorism and natural hazards. Vulnerability is a characteristic of a critical infrastructure's design, implementation, or operation that renders the basis susceptible to destruction or incapacitation by a threat. Vulnerabilities may consist of flaws in security procedures, software, internal system controls, or installation of infrastructure that may affect the integrity, confidentiality, accountability, or availability of data or services. Vulnerability assessments provide a systematic analysis of the utility's susceptibility to an attack and the means by which the utility can reduce its risk. This paper reviews categories of vulnerability of the water supply system, and discusses strategies for reducing them. Also, in order to assess the vulnerability, the actions/threats that an adversary could take to keep a wastewater utility from are identified. Then the specific assets (i.e., infrastructure, employees, information, or finances) that may be impacted by the identified threats are identified. After evaluating existing countermeasures, current risks associated with threats and assets are analyzed. Finally additional countermeasures and prioritize based on a risk-reduction analysis are recommended.