The annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) January 9-13 will include a hazardous materials security discussion by Tom Moses, president of Spill Center, Hudson MA.
The TRB sessions will be held at the Washington DC Connecticut Avenue Collection hotels: Marriott Wardman Park, Omni Shoreham, and Hilton Washington.
Moses will present a concept for a sophisticated hazmat information processing and communication system center. The session is scheduled for 1-5 pm Sunday, January 9, and is entitled, Hazardous Materials Transportation Safety and Security Operational Test: Findings and Future Considerations. Co-presenter is Steve Keppler, director, policy and programs, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance.
"In this era of global terrorism, law enforcement, and emergency response, agencies in the United States require advanced capabilities to enhance public safety and security, especially in the transportation of hazardous materials that can be used as weapons of mass destruction," Moses, an environmental attorney and former Environmental Protection Agency toxicologist, said.
The Spill Center-designed program would create centralized information processing and command and control capabilities using existing technologies.
The program would continuously analyze data transmitted by truck-tracking systems, on-board computers, and other telematic devices to predict when a material in transportation poses a threat, he said.
It would provide the ability to integrate a wide variety of telematic devices with event messaging, enabling the sharing of information, including data from the truck-tracking systems and various security devices without regard to proprietary hardware or software, Moses said.
If patterns associated with increased risk are identified, the Internet-based system would automatically send alerts to law enforcement, response agencies, transporters, shippers and other registered users.
Alerts could be sent in the (user-specified) form of an e-mail, fax, page, text-enabled cell phone message, or voice message.
Moses said the effectiveness of the concept was demonstrated during the course of a Department of Transportation's year-long hazardous materials safety and security field operations test.
The testing included technologies that could be used to prevent commercial vehicles carrying hazardous materials from being used in terrorist attacks.
If implemented, the concept could evolve into a very ubiquitous resource because of the system's ability to serve as a data consolidator, the widespread nature of event messaging, and the universal importance of alert notification, he added.
For more information presented by Moses on similar topics, click here for the Spill Center Web site at spillcenter.com.
For more information about the meeting, click here for the TRB Web site at trb.org or call 301-694-5243.