Under dark skies: Port cities, extreme events, multi-scale processes and the vulnerability of controls around counter terrorism

这项研究旨在探讨英国港口城市面临恐怖主义威胁的特殊脆弱性，以及港口动态如何塑造这些脆弱性的性质。在本研究的范围内，港口被定义为货物和人员进入英国的入口点，它们可以是机场，海港或铁路终点站。据认为，那些在边界内或边界附近有港口的城市，在处理“新”形式恐怖主义的威胁方面，给安全和紧急服务带来了一系列特殊的问题。特别是，强调自杀式恐怖主义和使用大规模毁灭性武器的可能性意味着，由于通过港口的人数众多，以及存在可在现场造成大规模死亡的货物、货物和技术，港口特别容易受到攻击。这对检查货物和旅客都有相当大的影响，随着新的边境机构的设立，也产生了与机构间工作和信息共享有关的重大问题。“9·11”后西方国家遭受的恐怖袭击浪潮改变了与恐怖主义风险管理相关的“交战规则”。这些袭击表明，恐怖主义团体的重点及其试图采用的作案手法发生了重大转变。人们不再知道即将发生的攻击，也没有理由将选择的目标归类为“军事”或“政治”。相反，大规模死亡和破坏（物质和象征性）的可能性似乎是选择目标的主要驱动力，这就开辟了一系列新的地点，必须由安全和紧急服务部门保护。此外，还有一种与新恐怖主义相关的升级感，这种升级感与袭击的规模（显示出更大的协调感）、使用具有更大危害范围和破坏力的材料以及恐怖分子显然愿意为他们的事业而死有关。此外，新的恐怖分子结构松散，难以渗透，越来越“土生土长”，不受地缘政治界限的限制，受一套难以被敌国安全部门破坏的意识形态信仰的驱使。对港口城市来说，恐怖分子以及通过集装箱和其他运输方式进口毁灭性工具的可能性意味着它们具有一系列使它们成为潜在目标的特点。如果我们再加上攻击国家关键基础设施的这些组成部分可能造成的经济损失，那么问题的规模就变得显而易见了。本研究旨在探索通过检查城市内的弹性和脆弱性的基本过程，考虑组织间网络可以提高安全和应急服务的性能的影响，并探索港口可以产生更显著的风险组合的过程，以保护港口城市。该研究从系统的角度对港口的保护进行了研究，并在风险评估，组织理论和复杂性科学（特别是生物复杂性）领域进行了初步分析，以研究港口城市内风险周围的健身景观的产生。该研究将试图在“健康景观”的背景下对港口城市进行建模，以确定服务，组织和网络的相互关联性方面存在的脆弱性的关键点。然后，这将被用作一种手段，提供加强资产和建设机构间网络复原力的战略。

This research seeks to explore the particular vulnerabilities that are faced by port cities in the UK to terrorist threats and the manner in which the dynamics of ports can shape the nature of those vulnerabilities. Within the context of this study, ports are defined as providing a point of entry into the UK for goods and people and they can either be airports, seaports, or railway termini. It is felt that those cities which have ports within or close to their boundaries present a particular set of problems for the security and emergency services in terms of dealing with the threat from 'new' forms of terrorism. In particular, the emphasis on suicide terrorism and the potential for the use of weapons of mass destruction mean that ports have a particular vulnerability due to the numbers of people who pass through them and the presence of goods, cargo and technology that could be used in situ to cause mass fatalities. There are considerable implications for the screening of both goods and passengers and, with the creation of the new border agency, significant issues relating to inter-agency working and information sharing. The wave of ''post-9/11' terrorist attacks on Western nations have changed the 'rules of engagement' associated with the management of terrorism risks. These attacks represent a significant shift in the focus of terrorist groups and the modus operandi that they seek to employ. Warnings are no longer given of an impending attack and there is no sense in which the targets of choice can be categorised as 'military' or 'political'. Instead, the potential for mass fatalities and damage (both material and symbolic) appears to be a principal driver for target selection and this opens a range of new sites that have to be protected by the security and emergency services. In addition, there is also a sense of escalation associated with the new terrorism that is related to the scale of the attack (showing a greater sense of co-ordination), the use of materials with a greater hazard range and destructive power, and the apparent willingness of the terrorists to die for their cause. In addition, the new terrorists are loosely structured in a way that makes them difficult to infiltrate, are increasingly 'home-grown', are not mapped onto geo-political boundaries and are driven by a set of ideological beliefs that are difficult to undermine by the security services of enemy states. For port cities, the potential for the importation of terrorist agents as well as the means of destruction through container and other forms of transport, means that they have a set of characteristics that make them potential targets. If we add to that the potential for economic damage that can be caused by attacking these elements of the national critical infrastructure then the scale fo the problem becomes apparent. This research seeks to explore the processes through which it is possible to protect port cities by examining the underlying processes of resilience and vulnerability within cities, considering the impact that inter-organisational networks can have for improving the performance of the security and emergency services, and exploring the processes by which ports can generate a more significant portfolio of risks for their city hinterlands. The research takes a systems perspective on the protection of ports and grounds that initial analysis within the fields of risk assessment, organizational theory, and complexity science (notably biological complexity) to examine the production of fitness landscapes around risk within port cities. The research will seek to model the port city within the context of a 'fitness landscape' in an attempt to ascertain the key points of vulnerability that exist in terms of the interconnected nature of services, organisations and networks. This will then be used as a means of providing strategies for asset hardening and building resilience in terms of inter-agency networks.