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Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications Peter D. E. Biggins Deeph Chana Editors CBRNE: Challenges in the 21st Century Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications Editor-in-Chief Anthony J. Masys, Associate Professor, Director of Global Disaster Management, Humanitarian Assistance and Homeland Security, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA Advisory Editors Gisela Bichler, California State University, San Bernardino, CA, USA Thirimachos Bourlai, Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Multispectral Imagery Lab (MILab), West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA Chris Johnson, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK Panagiotis Karampelas, Hellenic Air Force Academy, Attica, Greece Christian Leuprecht, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, Canada Edward C. Morse, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA David Skillicorn, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada Yoshiki Yamagata, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan Indexed by SCOPUS The series Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications comprises interdisciplinary research covering the theory, foundations and domain-specific topics pertaining to security. Publications within the series are peer-reviewed monographs and edited works in the areas of: . biological and chemical threat recognition and detection (e.g., biosensors, aerosols, forensics) . crisis and disaster management . terrorism . cyber security and secure information systems (e.g., encryption, optical and photonic systems) . traditional and non-traditional security . energy, food and resource security . economic security and securitization (including associated infrastructures) . transnational crime . human security and health security . social, political and psychological aspects of security . recognition and identification (e.g., optical imaging, biometrics, authentication and verification) . smart surveillance systems . applications of theoretical frameworks and methodologies (e.g., grounded theory, complexity, network sciences, modelling and simulation) Together, the high-quality contributions to this series provide a cross-disciplinary overview of forefront research endeavours aiming to make the world a safer place. The editors encourage prospective authors to correspond with them in advance of submitting a manuscript. Submission of manuscripts should be made to the Editor-in-Chief or one of the Editors. · Peter D. E. Biggins Deeph Chana Editors CBRNE: Challenges in the 21st Century Editors Peter D. E. Biggins Deeph Chana Institute of Security Science Institute of Security Science and Technology and Technology Imperial College London Imperial College London London, UK London, UK ISSN 1613-5113 ISSN 2363-9466 (electronic) Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications ISBN 978-3-031-17373-8 ISBN 978-3-031-17374-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17374-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Preface Context for This Book At the time of preparing this book, the world was going through the profound event of a pandemic in the shape of the COVID-19 virus and the planet’s population has become increasingly aware of the global and long-lasting impact that such events can have. In many aspects, the virus has revealed national and international shortcom- ings in assessing, communicating and mitigating risk, and furthermore, its inability to coordinate responses on local, regional, national and international scales. Impor- tantly, for this book, COVID-19 has also sparked a debate as to the virus’s origin, with information, misinformation and disinformation circulating around the theo- ries of this biological event’s natural vs human manufactured origin story. This and other memes have greatly amplified the impact of the virus beyond its physical health consequences, polarising communities, bringing about political upheaval and calling into question the validity of science and scientific reasoning in many circles. In a cyber security obsessed security narrative, it has been an important reminder to us that we live in a cyber-physical world in which threats to our security and resilience are now characterised by complex interactions and interplays between our material reality and our digital existence. In the modern world, physical threats are characterised by cyber enablers and cyber consequences whilst cyber threats are, similarly, enabled by physical consequences and physical enablers; a key example of this point being the hardware infrastructure that connects us over wires, fibre and radio waves. Furthermore, if we examine the trends of this infrastructure, we can readily see that the coming years and decades will see a continued increase in our global intercon- nectivity with both digital and material objects, including ourselves, moving more freely over our networks and systems. v vi Preface Structure of This Book We have already alluded to the fact that in the world of security thinking there is often a line of demarcation drawn between the so-called ‘physical’ security problems and the domain of ‘cyber’ security. In this traditional taxonomy of security problems, physical security threats are typically, in turn, further categorised as being Chem- ical (C), Biological (B), Radiological (R), Nuclear (N), Explosive (E), collectively referred to by the initialism, and the CBRNE acronym is widely used throughout this book. Although N is mentioned, it is not covered in detail. In the early chapters of this book, we have invited contributions from authors with experience of working in each of these categories with a remit to provide historical context of the subject matter and bring the reader to a contemporary understanding. Each one of these chapters may be read in isolation if a primer is needed in any one of the CBRE elements, but in combination, it is hoped that the reader will be able to gain a good foundational understanding of the overall CBRNE security landscape and the linkages between each of the categories. On this last point, the reader should become aware that the taxonomy of physical threats is an imperfect one, and whilst useful for providing a framework for managing and working on such threats, there are no rigorous delineations that we feel are convincing from a scientific standpoint. Radiological materials are obviously chemicals as are explosives and it is not entirely clear whether to classify viruses as chemicals or biological entities—although they are typically treated in the latter category. We point out the imperfection of this taxonomy not to criticise its use, but rather to warn against an over obsession with its exactness, which is worth criticising. Following a discussion of CBRNE, we then spend several chapters discussing the topic of security risk with the aim of illustrating just how challenging it is to make quantitative assessments of risk and relative threat severity when we consider physical threats in our modern world. It is seductive to think that the calculation of such risks is relatively straightforward as, naively, all that seems to be needed is the quantification of factors such as an event’s likelihood and its impact. The discussions that are exposed by our authors, however, show that deriving an understanding of each is far from trivial and uncertainties abound. As an illustration of this, if we simply recognise that human behaviour is extremely complex and difficult to formulate, we realise that risk quantification requires a partnership of subjective and objective considerations that makes it far from an exact discipline. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of our cyber-physical world seems to exacerbate the situation, introducing novel factors and emergent behaviours for consideration that may not previously have been considered. This issue of determining risks accurately leads naturally to difficulties in assessing how we might mitigate or mollify CBRNE risks. Once again it is human factors that, arguably, contribute most heavily to the full weight of this task, which lies at the core of transforming situations of insecurity and fragility into those of security and resilience. Chapter “Human Factors and Societal Aspects in Future CBRNE Incidents”, therefore, expounds on the topic of utilising human factors in crisis response, focusing on how CBRNE impact may be addressed from this perspective. In the final third of this book, we hope to illustrate and explain how physical threats are now embedded in modern socio-technical settings where humans and Preface vii machines interact with each other through data, algorithms, and physical actuation. The ubiquity of cyber-physical technologies such as driverless cars, autonomous delivery systems, smart homes and smart-healthcare devices, amongst other inno- vations, should compel those who consider problems of cyber security and physical security to be unbridgeable silos to think again. The taxonomy of physical vs cyber security needs to be recognised as being an imperfect one, with more and more of the interesting and societally meaningful problems lying in their intersection. At the time of writing, it seems that communities typically focused on ‘cyber’ have recognised the need to step away from such dogmatic adherence to these labels, but the same cannot necessarily be said of agencies, organisations and practitioners who consider themselves experts in CBRNE related matters. Another traditional boundary between security communities that also proves to be counterproductive—through examples such as the COVID-19 pandemic—is that between those who consider questions of psychology and human behaviour and those who consider more tractable analytic problems in technology. Our digital world now enables the mass propagation of disinformation and the generation and global distribution of misinformation, both with the potential to cause emotional, mental and, most importantly for our discussion here, physical damage and impact. In one form or another, we can suppose that disinformation campaigns are part of the military thinking of nearly every nation state and many non-state organisations too. This motivates the urgent need for research communities and practitioners who are well versed in human behavioural research in combination with in-depth technical knowledge, such as the generation of deep-fakes using machine learning. At the time of writing the concept of digitally created virtual realities, termed metaverses, is perhaps the most disruptive socio-technical trend that is set to shape human existence in the decades to come. Taking early ideas of virtual reality to another level, metaverses promise the ability to decentralise organisations, transact real contracts and agreements and exchange value and assets through cryptocur- rencies and non-fungible tokens. The blurring of boundaries between material and digital realities that is at the heart of this technology evolution only serves to amplify the issues related to the erosion of current security taxonomies as the lines of demarcation between categorical boundaries become increasingly meaningless, acting as a prohibitive rather than an enabler to examining and solving security problems. In short, this book aims to outline the urgent need for CBRNE threats to be considered within the context of the emerging and disruptive technology trends that are shaping our societies. London, UK Peter D. E. Biggins Deeph Chana Acknowledgements The editors would like to thank the chapter authors for their contributions and for bringing the concept of this book to fruition. The contributing authors and editors also thank their colleagues and families for their support in this endeavour. In addition, special thanks go to Jack Cooper for obtaining permissions and proofreading and to Caroline Biggins and Max Swinscow-Hall for additional proofreading. Contents The Changing Landscape .......................................... 1 P. D. E. Biggins, J. F. Hassard, and S-R. Sellevåg Chemical Threats ................................................. 17 J. F. Hassard and M. S. Nieuwenhuizen Biological Threats ................................................. 47 J. M. Blatny Radiological and Nuclear ........................................... 79 M. Lavelle Explosives and Explosive Effects .................................... 101 W. G. Proud Risk Assessment, Resilience and Adaptability for Future CBRNE Security .......................................................... 137 M. Endregard and K. O. Nystuen CBRN Terrorism .................................................. 155 M. A. Wilson Human Factors and Societal Aspects in Future CBRNE Incidents ...... 175 K. Brattekås Risk in the Infrastructure of the Future: A Holistic View .............. 193 N. Goldbeck and W. Y. Ochieng Disinformation in the Deployment and Mitigation of CBRNE Attacks in the Age of New Social Media (NSM) ....................... 209 J. F. Hassard and S-R. Sellevåg Looking Forward—Towards a Comprehensive Approach ............. 219 P. D. E. Biggins, D. S. Chana, and S-R. Sellevåg ix Contributors Biggins P. D. E. Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College, London, UK Blatny J. M. Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt (FFI)), Kjeller, Norway Brattekås K. Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt (FFI)), Kjeller, Norway Chana D. S. Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College, London, UK Endregard M. Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt (FFI)), Kjeller, Norway Goldbeck N. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK Hassard J. F. Department of Physics, Imperial College, London, UK Lavelle M. Intelligent Ontologies Ltd. & Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College, London, UK Nieuwenhuizen M. S. CBRN Protection Department, TNO, Rijswijk, The Netherlands Nystuen K. O. Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt (FFI)), Kjeller, Norway Ochieng W. Y. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK Proud W. G. Blackett Laboratory, Institute of Shock Physics, Imperial College, London, UK xi