A first: a Master's degree in infrastructure protection
Ottawa’s Carleton University has unveiled a first-of-its-kind degree program: a Master of Infrastructure Protection; the program was launched last week, is offering a unique mix of courses related to engineering and national security policy; the aim is to educate infrastructure designers and engineers about policy-related issues, and policy makers about the design and engineering of the interconnected systems that form Canada’s economic and societal backbone
Carleton University, in Ottawa, Ontrario, has unveiled a first-of-its-kind degree in protecting critical national infrastructure from terrorists, natural disasters, and other calamities.
The Master of Infrastructure Protection and International Security program began last week, offering a unique mix of courses related to engineering and national security policy. The aim is to educate infrastructure designers and engineers about policy-related issues, and policy makers about the design and engineering of the interconnected systems that form Canada’s economic and societal backbone.
“We’re not going to make engineers out of people with a policy background, but we give them an understanding of what is involved in critical infrastructure protection and design and vice-versa, so the engineers get to know what goes into a policy and what goes into security management,” Carleton engineering professor Abass Braimah said.
Ian MacLeod writes in the Ottawa Citizen that students with engineering backgrounds, in addition to specializing in infrastructure engineering design, mitigation and management, will take courses in national security policy, risk management, intelligence, and terrorism. Students with a policy background will reinforce their national security policy, intelligence and terrorism expertise with an understanding of infrastructure engineering design and mitigation.
The program, which the university says is unique in North America and perhaps the world, is offered by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.
The university initially planned for fifteen students, but when sixty applied for the inaugural session, the two-year program was expanded to twenty-five participants. They include graduate students, federal government specialists on educational leave and others already working in Canada’s ten critical infrastructure sectors, from food and water to public utilities, aviation, public health, and telecommunications.
MacLeod writes that natural disasters pose the biggest threat to critical national infrastructure, but terrorists now routinely strike critical energy infrastructure overseas, often with skills and tactics honed on the battlefields of Iraq.
Terrorism experts, including Carleton’s distinguished research professor emeritus Martin Ruder, who co-conceived the new program, have long warned Islamist extremists could turn to infrastructure targets in Canada.
