Risk assessment due to terrorist actions on public transportation networks : a case study in Portugal

The work presented in this paper was performed in collaboration with one of the largest Public Transportation Operator in Portugal and addresses the problem of risk assessment due to terrorist actions involving explosions at different levels. First, a region of the Operator is selected. The elements in the Operator's network with the highest associated risk are highlighted for each threat using the COUNTERACT guidelines. Subsequently, from the group of elements with the highest associated risk, an element is selected for structural safety evaluation under blast loading. Through numerical analysis, different explosion scenarios are studied and the behavior of the structure is presented.This work was performed under Project CH-SECURE, with reference PTDC/ECM/120118/2010, funded by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology - FCT. The authors acknowledge the support. The first author also acknowledges the support from his PhD FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/45436/2008