ASME risk-analysis tool is applied to campuses.

A company formed by ASME that applies risk-analysis techniques to help authorities protect the infrastructure of the United States has turned its attention to the nation's college and university campuses.

The company, ASME-Innovative Technologies Institute, has received a grant from the

The program for colleges is the RAMCAP for Higher Education Assessment Tool, or RAMCAP Campus. RAMCAP is an acronym for "risk analysis and management for critical assets protection."

Reese Meisinger, president of ASME-ITI, said that plans are under way to move the guidance to a formal consensus standard.

The project is overseen by an advisory group that includes representatives from about a dozen schools. Committee members include Mike Abbiatti, associate commissioner for information and learning technology of the Louisiana Board of Regents, and Robert Cruz, AIG's homeland security, practice leader. Richard Benson, dean of engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, chairs the advisory committee.

Meisinger said the security program has been tested by a number of schools. One in southern California focused on earthquake hazards. The program has been used by a Louisiana campus that had been hard-hit by Gulf hurricanes.

The University of Texas of the Permian Basin, in Odessa, also has used it. According to Lail Grant, the school's safety coordinator, the campus sits m the middle of a natural gas field. The 580-acre campus has nine well sites and there is a collection line on the east border of the school grounds. The risk assessment for the campus is still in development, he said.

RAMCAP Campus consists of an interactive program that will be made available to post-secondary educational institutions once the beta testing is completed this summer. It considers three areas separately: natural hazards, personal security, and building security. A cost/benefit analysis decision tool is also built in to the software.

The user completes forms and drop-down menu items using information that should be readily available at the institution. The output of RAMCAP Campus consists of a series of quantitative and qualitative scores that provide an indication of the safety and security at the campus with respect to a broad range of possible threats.

Risk to buildings and capital equipment is a calculation that weighs the threat frequency, the vulnerability of the facility, and the consequences of the event, expressed in dollars. The cost includes replacement value of the facility, lost revenue to the institution, and other costs that can be attributed directly to the event.

Risk to individuals is expressed as the likelihood of death or injury to people at the institution.

According to ASME-ITI, it is intended to provide institutions of higher learning, as well as parents, students, and the public, with the means to determine the risks from hazards that may reasonably be expected at each institution. An understanding of relative risk can guide security and safety officials in planning for extreme events at their schools.

Risk analysis calculates the probability and consequences of failures so that appropriate action can be taken to forestall them. Factories, for instance, use risk analysis techniques to judge the best maintenance intervals for machinery, and military planners to rate the soundness of missions.