Aviation safety and bioterrorism are targeted at ASME special session

Benedict Bahner
ASME NEWS
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 brought terrorism front and center in the public consciousness. Those attacks — as well as the subsequent anthrax-laced letters sent to U.S. government offices and the press — made an impact on air travel and increased concerns about public health safety not only in the United States, but also all over the world.

Peter Weirach, a mechanical engineer from Germany, was concerned enough to attend "Technology vs. Terrorism: Designing Against the Threat of Assault," ASME's special session at the Congress last month. He wanted to find out what U.S. government agencies and industry were doing to deter terrorist threats to America via aircraft or bioterrorism.

"The events of Sept. 11 have not only had an effect here in the U.S," Weirach said. "They've also had a great effect in Germany. Terrorism affects all of us. I wanted to know what leaders in America thought about terrorism — their views on the future and how to protect themselves from further terrorist acts."

More than 800 people attended the special session for just that reason. The meeting took place on the first day of ASME International's 2001 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition. The two-hour session featured eight panelists speaking on the subjects of aviation security and bioterrorism.

David L. Belden, ASME's executive director, greeted the session's attendees and speakers. This was followed by opening remarks from John Odermatt of the New York Office of Emergency Management, who read a letter from Mayor Rudy Giuliani welcoming the session's participants.

James O'Bryon, deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense and deputy director of operational test and evaluation, live fire testing, was one of four speakers discussing aviation safety.

O'Bryon, who works in the Pentagon, said he "still had a chunk of glass from one of the windows" from when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11. That day, several U.S. commercial airliners were each turned into "the largest cruise missile in the world," he said, traveling at several hundred miles an hour and carrying enough jet fuel to raze America's most important buildings.

John Andersen, a member of ASME's Board of Governors and chairman of Aflight Tech Inc. in Edgewood, N.M, discussed Required Navigation Performance (RNP) — a current, in-service automated flight system that prevents cockpit takeovers.

Susan Hallowell, manager of explosives and weapons detection at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, closed the first half of the session with a presentation on airport safety research and development.

Hallowell said she liked the idea of a national travel card that would work like a passport but would electronically track your flight passenger data. She said she looks forward to the day when the card would be implemented and there would be various levels of screening, depending on who the passenger is and how often that passenger travels.

One of the technologies in development is the explosives detection portal, a CAT scan-like tunnel for detecting concealed weapons to be used at airports, she said. This and other developing technology could be used commercially in the next five years, but Hallowell cautioned, "There's nothing worse than deploying technology too early" when the bugs haven't been worked out. Then "people hate it."

One of those engineers in the audience, John Buzek, said he was encouraged by what he heard during the panel session. Buzek, who is president of AEC Engineering Inc. in Minneapolis and an ASME member, attended the session with his wife, Eva. "My wife is a flight attendant, so she wanted to see the session," he said. "I wanted to see it. We're all thinking a lot about the subject these days. It's important to find out what's being done [to combat terrorism]."

Buzek said he was impressed by the panel and by the topics they examined. "What these technologies will allow us to do is fascinating when you think about it — from redirecting airplanes before they crash to taking control of airplanes that have been commandeered," he said. "Or the new metal detectors at airports, which will be less of a gate you have to go through, and more of a tunnel in which your entire body is scanned. Maybe they'll even be able to scan you for a disease while they're at it."

The bioterrorism portion of the panel session also featured ASME Fellow Yogi Goswami, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, who discussed ventilation decontamination, and Christopher Aston, a molecular biologist in neuroscience research who is an adjunct professor of medicine at New York University Medical Center. In addition, Jim Zarzycki, technical director of the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command, gave a presentation on the detection of bioagents.

Back to Part One of the ASME special panel session coverage