Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

PREFACE

The topic of homeland security did not begin with the World Trade Center or the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or the dissidents of past empires, but began when the concept of a nation versus a tribe or kingdom took root and allegiance to people was a choice, not a mandate. The concept of terrorism is part of homeland security but not all of it, as there are other risks to homeland security that come from Mother Nature or our own lack of action, like infrastructure renewal, that have much higher probabilities of creating substantial damage and loss of life than any group of terrorists could ever conceive. Hence, the focus of this Handbook focuses more on the insecurities that can disrupt or damage a nation, its people and economy, and the science and technology (S&T) ideas and tools that can assist in detecting, preventing, mitigating, recovering, and repairing the effects of such insecurities.

The number of S&T topics that are involved in the physical, cyber, and social areas of homeland security include thousands of specialties in hundreds of disciplines, and no single collection could hope to cover even a majority of these. The Handbook was designed to discuss those areas that form a foundation of knowledge and awareness that readers can use to base their understanding on and move to higher levels of sophistication and sensitivity as needed. For example, the many different areas of detection of chemical substances alone could take around 100 volumes to cover, but there ...