***** Transportation Security. By Clifford R. Bragdon; published by Elsevier/ Butterworth-Heinemann; available from ASIS, item # 1814, www.asisonline.org [1] (Web), 703/519-6200 (phone); 423 pages; $80 (ASIS members), $88 (nonmembers).

Describing the target audience of Transportation Security, author Clifford R. Bragdon conspicuously omits transportation security professionals. Yet this academic-style textbook provides a sound overview of the fundamentals, whether for aspiring security professionals, or as Bragdon himself suggests, “planners, engineers, architects, managers, logisticians, and public officials.”

In the first part of this book, Bragdon presents the various models of transportation security, in both national and global contexts. He acknowledges the limitations of each, illustrating the need for an integrated approach. In the next section he examines different transportation sectors and the security history of each, highlighting 9-11 as a watershed event for the aviation sector in particular. Keeping with the book’s textbook style, Bragdon provides summaries and conclusions for each transportation sector. He then goes further to offer suggestions for improvement.

To me, the book’s third section was its most interesting, especially the discussion of the principles of security (protect, prevent, detect, and recover) and their application to the secure movement of individuals, goods, and information over land, sea, and air. Bragdon demonstrates in great detail the criticality of situational awareness in security management and the usefulness of technology to that end, especially access control and video monitoring products. He stresses the necessity of a central location for monitoring and communications functions.

Chapter 11 was particularly informative, covering RFID technology in depth; differentiating between the active and passive RFID; and addressing the applications, advantages, and disadvantages of each. The text ends with a strong recommendation to reexamine all modes of transportation.

Transportation Security seems most appropriate in a classroom setting as a text for a college course or as reading for a specialized training curriculum in the transportation field for professionals of both public and private agencies.

Reviewer: Jack F. Dowling, CPP, PSP, is president of JD Security Consultants, LLC, in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. He teaches in the University of Phoenix’s Criminal Justice Administration Program and is a member of ASIS’s Commercial Real Estate Council and the ASIS Facilities Physical Security Measures Guideline Committee.

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