Vulnerability Assessments

Recent bioterrorism legislation now makes vulnerability assessments a requirement for all utilities serving more than 3,300 persons. Deadlines for the completion of these assessments are specified according to population.

Applying the Risk Assessment Methodology for Water Utilities (RAM-W) will help your municipality continue to meet its mission and goals.

Using this methodology to conduct a vulnerability assessment will:

• Determine the assets that need to be protected to minimize the impacts of an undesirable event;
• Define how malevolent acts might be conducted, including physical damage, chemical, biological and radiological contamination, cyber attacks and interdependency disruptions;
• Assess the likelihood of such malevolent acts;
• Characterize each site within the water system;
• Identify the most critical targets, detail their interrelationships within other targets in the system and identify the consequences of malevolent acts that could be directed against them;
• Evaluate the effectiveness of both existing and proposed protection systems;
• Identify a system's vulnerabilities and provide a prioritized plan for security upgrades, modifications of operational procedures and/or policy changes to mitigate identified risks to critical targets;
• Prepare an Emergency Operations Plan for Water and Wastewater Utilities based upon these findings.