Book Review: Transportation Systems Security

Posted on 2009-03-19 by

Revised on: 2015-09-09

This book, Transportation Systems Security by by Allan McDougall and Robert Radvanovsky is not what I thought it would be, but it’s not the books fault, I have to admit that much. It’s the classic misunderstanding of the difference of the terms “safety” and “security”. In English, these terms are distinctively different, in my language, Norwegian, there is only one word, “sikkerhet”, and sometimes this can be very confusing. So, what I thought was “safety” (which was what I was looking for) was in fact “security” (which was what I was NOT looking for). Nonetheless, personal disappointments aside, this book has some valid and interesting points, primarily in the introductory and theoretical parts in the beginning.

The strong side

The best chapter of the book, as far as I am concerned, is chapter 2: The Transportation System Topography, building the theoretical base for most of the book. The authors demonstrate a solid knowledge and understanding and manage to convey it in a clear and precise manner.

The weak side

The front cover gives the impression that this book deals with all transportation modes, or at least with air, sea and rail. It does not. And it is not so hands-on as I thought it would be. At times it seems to be just meandering along without getting anywhere. I can understand that there is a lot of ground to cover, but do you really have to cover it all?

Conclusion

It is not a NO-buy, but also not a YES-buy, rather a MAYBE-buy. If you’re looking for a book on transportation vulnerability or transportation risks, this is probably not the book for you. However, if you are a transportation systems manager who wants to secure your transportation system against malicious attacks, yes, this book could be very helpful, albeit it will probably not be the one you will be using as a reference more than a few times.