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Geographic Information System Approach in Evaluating Security Challenges to Critical Infrastructures
Last modified: 2016-06-27
Abstract
In the past, criminality was a taboo and almost everybody franked at it and thus security challenges were so minimal or non-existent. Unfortunately it has now become a means of livelihood or a means to address disagreements where lives as well as critical infrastructures are destroyed mindlessly. While there are recognized occasional natural security challenges such as volcanic eruptions, Hurricane Katrina among others, most frequent security challenges are man-made organized and executed with cut edge professionalism and sophistication. Conventional methods and hence measures of monitoring and addressing various man-made security challenges have in the past been adopted by security operatives but criminals have always responded with sophisticated countermeasures and overwhelming successes maiming and massively in most cases destroying badly needed critical infrastructures. The intention of this research is to adopt Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, a real-time and speedy as well as reliable approach to address real-time security challenges to lives and critical infrastructures. In this method the study area was subdivided into geographic cells and an evaluation on each cell from some chosen observation posts were analyzed in a GIS environment to establish intervisibility to identified target location(s) which includes human habitations, critical infrastructures among others. ASTER Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was used as the platform for Line-Of-Sight (LOS) and Viewshed Analysis (VA).Observation points were selected on both high and lowlands. Optimal observation posts including the target points together with their attribute details such as the X, Y, Z coordinates were obtained for rapid response to any security challenge. The results of the research showed that observations made on highlands produced more viewable areas than lowlands thus large critical infrastructures in the study area could be monitored from the identified optimal observation posts in a control room from where stationed strike force could be directed to confront any observed security challenge at the identified target location(s).
Keywords
critical infrastructure; digital elevation model; geographic information system; line-of-sight; security challenge; viewshed analysis
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