The DHS (Department of Homeland Security) released a revised “Site-Specific Risk Assessment” (SSRA) of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) on March 2nd, 2012. The document is available as an Executive Summary, Volume I, Volume II, and Appendices (Note: these are large PDF files, general site available here). The new document includes “a more systematic approach to the assessment of potential accidents and characterization of uncertainties; Incorporation of tornado modeling; Additional data (susceptible populations, outbreak control measure resources, etc.) collected for the NBAF location and used in the epidemiological and economic modeling; an assessment of cumulative risk of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) release over the predicted lifetime of the NBAF; and an assessment of the unique risks of a large animal high containment laboratory (ABSL-4)”. The risk of livestock-devastating disease (Foot and Mouth Disease) escaping in 50 years is calculated to be 0.11%. When natural disasters such as earthquakes and tornado’s are excluded, the risk becomes 0.008%. A previous risk assessment had put the 50 year risk of release at 70%, which authors now say was unrealistic.
