New Risk Analysis Methodology for Religious Buildings

Abstract

Religious buildings are sites exposed to specific risks represented, for example, by theft, vandalism, damage, and terrorism that could injure both people and cultural/religious heritage. Therefore, they need proper actions to prevent the above risks and to protect against them using intrusion detection, access control, video surveillance, communication systems, security personnel and procedures properly integrated to realize an integrated system or solution. In this paper a novel risk analysis methodology for religious buildings (RARB) is illustrated, showing as a case study, without any loss of its general validity, its application to a Catholic church. The proposed risk analysis technique allows identifying the exact number of physical security protections (intrusion detection system, access control, video surveillance, communication devices, security personnel, etc.) that the religious site needs and the related performances as a function of the possible targets which can be attacked. It also allows avoiding overestimating the risk as in the case of including redundant protective countermeasures that sometimes result to be useless, thereby reducing the related extra costs involved. Furthermore, it results in being useful and suitable for plenty of other cultural heritage sites.

New Security Risk Assessment and Genetic Algorithms Based Methods to Optimize Risk Reduction Countermeasures for Cultural Heritage Sites

“…The proposed methodology of security risk assessment employed for cultural heritage sites (SRACHS) exemplifies a specific use acquired from the Physical Security Adapted Layer of Protection Analysis (PSA-LOPA) methodology [16][17][18][19]. It permits of attaining the right amount of security defences (video surveillance, access control, intrusion detection system, etc.)…”

“…Afterward that the diverse credits have been estimated, the PSA-LOPA evaluation [17] is attained with the estimation of the risk coefficient, associated to the k scenario, using the equation properly simplified for the considered context, without any loss of generality [19]:…”

Novel Risk Assessment Methodology for Cultural Heritage Sites

“…The suggested method of risk assessment applied to cultural heritage sites (RACHS) characterizes a particular application obtained from the Physical Security Adapted Layer of Protection Analysis (PSA-LOPA) method [8], [9]. It allows of obtaining the correct quantity of physical security protections (video surveillance, access control, intrusion detection system, etc.)…”

“…Since LOPA method [10] was firstly thought to estimate industrial risk, the abovementioned expression required to be accustomed. By adjusting it to the physical security risk, it gave extremely precise and useful results where the PSA-LOPA methodology [8], [9] has been employed. The same results were obtained when the derivative RACHS method was applied to cultural heritage sites.…”