Physical Security of Water Utilities

Large university affiliated medical research and healthcare delivery complexes have a requirement for a high degree of water system reliability. Many of them are dependent upon the host-city water supply. How much investment should university healthcare systems make in building infrastructure to secure their own water supply?

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Physical Security of Water Utilities

January 11, 2023
mike@standardsmichigan.com

“Spring Night, Harlem River” 1913 Earnest Lawson

Many school districts, colleges and universities are affected by annual spring flooding in the Central United States; seasonal inspiration for revisiting the technical and management codes and standards to avoid and/or mitigate water damages that may be originate with host municipality water supply and control authorities.

The standards developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and its affiliate institute — Environmental Water Resource Institute (EWRI) — should appear in the design guidelines given to professional services firms retained by the facility construction, operations and maintenance workgroups.  We encourage our colleagues in these units to update their design guidelines with the latest versions of the documents linked below:

ASCE/EWRI 56: Guidelines for the Physical Security of Water Utilities.  These water utility guidelines recommend physical and electronic security measures for physical protection systems to protect against identified adversaries, referred to as the design basis threats (DBTs), with specified motivation, tools, equipment, and weapons.

ASCE/EWRI 57: Guidelines for the Physical Security of Wastewater/Stormwater Utilities.   These wastewater/stormwater utilities guidelines recommend physical and electronic security measures for physical protection systems to protect against identified adversaries, referred to as the design basis threats (DBTs), with specified motivation, tools, equipment, and weapons. Additional requirements and security equipment may be necessary to defend against threats with greater capabilities.

Note that these documents are “paired” for the obvious reason that potable water systems must be separate from all other water systems.

No redlines that are in the upper tier of our priority rankings are open for public comment at this time; though there are two that might interest building contractors:

Standards currently accepting Public Comments include:

Public Comment on ASCE 7-22 Supplement for Chapter 5 (Comment Deadline 1-15-2023)

Public Comment on ASCE 7-22 Supplement for Referenced Standards (Comment Deadline 1-15-2023)

We encourage direct engagement by education industry leaders, their engineering consultants, or municipal water management experts to participate in the development of these standards through the ASCE standards portal:

ASCE Standards Public Comment Page

You will need to set up an access account.  You may also communicate directly with the American Society of Civil Engineers, 1801 Alexander Bell Dr., Reston, VA 20191.  Contact: James Neckel (jneckel@asce.org).

We keep water-related ASCE titles on the standing agenda of our Water colloquium. See our CALENDAR for the next teleconference; open to everyone.

 

Issue: [18-52]

Category: Civil Engineering, Water, #SmartCampus

Colleagues: Jack Janveja, Richard Robben, Steve Snyder, Larry Spielvogel


LEARN MORE:

Archive / ASCE Water & Wastewater


 

 

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