National Academies Press: OpenBook

Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas (2012)

Chapter: 2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment

« Previous: 1 Introduction
Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×

2

Evaluation of Design, Operations,
and Response Planning as Related
to the Risk Assessment

DESIGN PLANS

The updated site-specific risk assessment (uSSRA) of the National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) indicates that design modifications have been incorporated in the 65% design planning phase to enhance the facility’s overall biosafety and biosecurity. Members of the committee reviewed the facility’s 65% design phase documents to understand the assumptions about the release probabilities for the uSSRA and to verify that design concerns and recommendations raised by the previous National Research Council committee (NRC, 2010) had been adequately addressed. However, it was beyond the committee’s task to formally review or pass judgment on the actual engineering of the facility. Therefore, the comments provided below are not to be construed as an evaluation of the safety of the facility.

Members examined the plans and specifications, verified the presence of critical system components, and determined that calculations on waste streams were conservative. Many design solutions used and validated in the latest generation of high- and maximum-biocontainment facilities had been adopted and in some cases improved upon in the NBAF 65% design plans—an indication that some important lessons learned were incorporated during the design process. Committee members identified process flows for the entry and exit of materials, personnel, and animals and determined that they were logical and well conceived. In this context, design issues raised by the previous committee (NRC, 2010) were addressed in the 65% designs. The committee concurs with the uSSRA that design elements can enhance the safety of the biosafety level 3 agriculture (BSL-3Ag) and

Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×

BSL-4 areas, and can reduce the risk of release of high-containment pathogens in aerosol, solid, and liquid waste streams.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURES, PERSONNEL TRAINING, AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING

The committee recognizes that the uSSRA has made substantial advances over the 2010 SSRA in describing how the NBAF would develop standard operating procedures, personnel training, and emergency response planning. The uSSRA mentions future plans to further describe in detail, finalize, and operationalize such plans, policies, and procedures once the facility designs and construction have matured. Although the training and preparedness requirements of the Federal Select Agent Program established under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 are well documented, the uSSRA does not include the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans for personnel training in security, laboratory procedures, and emergency response as required by P.L. 112-10. Omission of that information from the uSSRA leads the committee to believe that preparations for this requirement have not been fully considered by DHS.

The content of the uSSRA suggests that BSL-3 and BSL-4 laboratories similar to the NBAF (such as those at Pirbright, UK, and Winnipeg, Canada) were queried for insight into standard operating procedures, personnel training, and emergency response planning. That is a substantial step beyond what was provided in the 2010 SSRA. However, many facilities in the United States, both federally and privately funded, work with select agents under the same regulations that the NBAF will have to operate under, and they could have provided additional insights into lessons learned, best practices, and the other issues addressed in the uSSRA.

The uSSRA provides a detailed list of emergency response best practices drawn from international, federal, and Kansas state resources to inform NBAF preparedness efforts. Absent from the list to draw upon for best practices are the National Fire Protection Association Standard on Disaster/ Emergency Management and Business Continuity Programs (NFPA 1600) and the Emergency Management Accreditation Program Standard, both of which provide current accepted practice information for emergency management programs. The uSSRA did not mention that Riley County has achieved National Weather Service StormReady status, an important achievement in all hazards and severe weather preparedness.

Overall, the conclusion reached in the uSSRA is that more efforts will be required in the future to develop and implement standard operating procedures, personnel training, and emergency response planning. Additional information will need to be obtained from all relevant sources to

Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×

fully inform the NBAF operators of the risks in order to optimize plans and procedures. Such relevant resources for key information include DHS’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s Regional Biocontainment Laboratories and National Biocontainment Laboratories, the Department of Defense’s U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other publicly and privately funded containment laboratories. Operators, scientists, biosafety officers, and response personnel from those facilities could offer significant insight into threats and hazards, lessons learned, crisis communication, and operations concerns to more fully inform those for the NBAF. Similarly, Riley County uses a hazard vulnerability analysis tool, which provides the best overarching view of the threats judged to pose the greatest risks to the county because of their probability of occurring, various vulnerabilities that exist in the area, and the consequences to people, property, the environment, and other assets (Patrick Collins, Riley County Emergency Management, personal communication, February 17, 2012). That may be instructive for the NBAF risk management and emergency planning process. The uSSRA indicates that these three critical areas will be addressed in the future when the NBAF begins construction and when it is closer to being operational. This raises the possibility that risks that needed to have been considered were never actually considered or modeled as part of the current risk assessment and which might be uncovered or recognized in the future.

REFERENCE

NRC (National Research Council). 2010. Evaluation of a Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the Department of Homeland Security’s Planned National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×

This page intentionally left blank.

Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×
Page 19
Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×
Page 20
Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×
Page 21
Suggested Citation:"2 Evaluation of Design, Operations, and Response Planning as Related to the Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 2012. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13418.
×
Page 22
Next: 3 Evaluation of Risk Approach and Calculations »
Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas Get This Book
×
Buy Paperback | $40.00 Buy Ebook | $32.99
MyNAP members save 10% online.
Login or Register to save!
Download Free PDF

Safeguarding U.S. agriculture from foreign animal diseases and protecting our food system require cutting-edge research and diagnostic capabilities. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have embarked on an important mission to replace the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center (PIADC) with a new facility, the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF). When operational, this new facility would be the world's fourth biosafety level-4 laboratory capable of large animal research. It would serve as a critical world reference laboratory for identifying emerging and unknown disease threats, and would thus be a critical asset in securing the future health, wealth, and security of the nation.

DHS selected Manhattan, Kansas, as the site for the new NBAF after an extensive site-selection process that involved an environmental impact statement. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) raised concerns about DHS's analysis of the potential spread of foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDv), one of the most serious foreign animal disease threats. Congress directed DHS to conduct a site-specific risk assessment (SSRA) for the NBAF, instructed the National Research Council (NRC) to independently evaluate the SSRA, and prohibited obligation of NBAF construction funds until the NRC review was complete.

Congress mandated that DHS revise its SSRA to address shortcomings of the 2010 SSRA, directed the NRC to evaluate the updated SSRA (uSSRA), and again prohibited obligation of construction funds until the completion of the second review. The scope for both of these SSRA reports addressed accidental release of pathogens from the NBAF in Manhattan, Kansas and excluded terrorist acts and malicious threats from its risk assessments. Evaluation of the Updated Site-Specific Risk Assessment for the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility in Manhattan, Kansas is the evaluation of the final uSSRA.

  1. ×

    Welcome to OpenBook!

    You're looking at OpenBook, NAP.edu's online reading room since 1999. Based on feedback from you, our users, we've made some improvements that make it easier than ever to read thousands of publications on our website.

    Do you want to take a quick tour of the OpenBook's features?

    No Thanks Take a Tour »
  2. ×

    Show this book's table of contents, where you can jump to any chapter by name.

    « Back Next »
  3. ×

    ...or use these buttons to go back to the previous chapter or skip to the next one.

    « Back Next »
  4. ×

    Jump up to the previous page or down to the next one. Also, you can type in a page number and press Enter to go directly to that page in the book.

    « Back Next »
  5. ×

    Switch between the Original Pages, where you can read the report as it appeared in print, and Text Pages for the web version, where you can highlight and search the text.

    « Back Next »
  6. ×

    To search the entire text of this book, type in your search term here and press Enter.

    « Back Next »
  7. ×

    Share a link to this book page on your preferred social network or via email.

    « Back Next »
  8. ×

    View our suggested citation for this chapter.

    « Back Next »
  9. ×

    Ready to take your reading offline? Click here to buy this book in print or download it as a free PDF, if available.

    « Back Next »
Stay Connected!