Analytic Hierarchy Process to Improve Simple Bridge Security Checklist

Enhancement of bridge security is key to improved homeland security and entails several steps, including on-site assessment, analysis of security components, and implementation of some mitigation measures. A review of the nation's current bridge security posture showed a need to develop methods to identify critical bridges as security hazards and to provide engineering standards and guidelines for security design to reduce the vulnerability of bridges to attack. In particular, a need was seen for a simple bridge security checklist to provide on-site assessment of bridge vulnerability and security risk. After the events of September 11, 2001, the New Jersey Department of Transportation asked Rutgers University to develop a checklist to be used by bridge inspectors to provide management with security data for the department's entire bridge inventory. Rutgers developed a concise checklist, which consisted of yes or no questions in three categories: occurrence, vulnerability, and importance. The overall risk of a structure was measured in terms of an equation risk. To improve this tool, a survey was administered to industry subject matter experts across the United States to determine the relative importance of each question. The data from the survey were analyzed with the use of the analytic hierarchy process, and new weights were assigned to each question. This paper provides the results of the survey and discusses the methodology, analysis of the survey results, and implementation of the updated tool.