While engineering studies of transportation often look at the regular flows of people by highway or urban mass transit, Civil and Environmental Engineering Professors Mark Turnquist and Linda Nozick focus on transportation and terrorism. Their research includes the development of modeling tools to support the transport of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors to a repository site in Nevada, as well as considering how terrorists might place a bomb on an airplane or in a shipping container entering the United States.

“We’re concerned about active opponents who would try to do as much damage as possible,” Nozick says. Her work with Turnquist is distinguished by a strong focus on uncertainty, using a combination of decision models, game theory, and stochastic network analysis methods. Their clients include Sandia National Laboratories, which provides support to operations of both the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“Attacks—if, when, and where—are highly uncertain, but our modeling can help to reduce the likelihood of an attack being successful,” says Turnquist.

Adds Nozick, “We are looking for robust protective strategies that will work well under a wide range of conditions and apply limited resources most effectively.”