The CBRN security paradigm & terrorism

In the face of terrorism threats, the training on CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) disaster preparedness gains attention not only scholars, but also decision-makers. It is a common misconception that CBRN terrorism is a niche phenomenon and that it is unjustified to engage serious resources and training to minimize the effects of potential use of CBRN by terrorists. This untrue thesis may stem from explicitly interpreted quantitative data which indicates that from the perspective of the third decade of the 21st century, CBRN terrorism has gone down in history with the 1995 attack on the Tokyo Metro. The data cited by Europol experts in its annual reports emphasize that EU countries are increasingly exposed to sophisticated technological methods of terrorist activities. The attacks can lead to disruption of critical infrastructure or cause failure of installations; when damaged, it can be seen as a substitute for the use of CBRN agents. In a worse case, the installations can contain toxic industrial material and the a big area becomes contaminated. In the context of such scenarios, the CBRN security paradigm emerges. It means that the awareness of CBRN issues increases and more advanced countermeasures are taken into account. Given the above, it can be noticed how important it is to prepare appropriate tools to support the work of the services responsible for combating CBRN terrorist threats [1].

[1]       P. Maciejewski, M. Gawlik-Kobylińska, J. Lebiedź, W. Ostant, and D. Aydın, “To Survive in a CBRN Hostile Environment: Application of CAVE Automatic Virtual Environments in First Responder Training,” presented at the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Applications of Intelligent Systems, 2020.