Can Trees And Bushes Help Stop Terrorist Acts? UF Students Say Yes

November 14, 1997

GAINESVILLE — A group of University of Florida students is helping the Department of Defense see if such seemingly unlikely things as landscaping and street design can help protect a military installation in the midst of a tourist mecca from a terrorist bomb blast.

If the ideas make the buildings more attractive in the process, all the better.

“There are 24 students with the common goal of protecting the site, yet enhancing the aesthetics of the site,” said Walter Meyer, a UF landscape architecture major. “Plants put a buffer between the blast and the building, like a shock absorber. It also makes the building look prettier.”

The students, who are studying landscape architecture and urban and regional planning, are working alongside security experts in redesigning the Joint Interagency Task Force East (JIATF), which is at the Key West Naval Air Station’s Truman Annex.

JIATF East houses one of the U.S. government’s primary drug interdiction centers. The task force monitors drug traffic moving from Central and South America to the United States and alerts authorities of illegal activity. The four-building site is considered a possible target for terrorist bombings.

Richard Schneider, UF associate professor of urban and regional planning and project director, said the plan is to “create a cocoon around the building” without destroying the integrity of the area. He said there is reason to be concerned, but the threat level is low.

The area in an “open base,” which means civilians can enter it in the daytime and it has only civilian guards at night. Although a recent antiterrorist assessment report by the United States Atlantic Command states the security is adequate, Schneider said the site is vulnerable to attacks in areas open to the public. The base has not been updated since it was built in the mid-’50s, when terrorist threats were unlikely.

One way security has been updated is through the creation of a walkway joining the buildings that allows personnel to move among them safely and provides a covered unloading area for trucks. Designs also move visitor parking lots farther away from the building to keep out unauthorized vehicles.

Roads leading to entrances will be curved, forcing traffic to slow down and preventing a bomb-laden truck, for instance, from crashing through security gates at high speeds. Electronic card readers, closed-circuit television cameras and intercoms are proposed to further protect the entrances.

Sterling Keys, crime prevention specialist for the Gainesville Police Department and consultant to the project, said the military is getting fresh perspectives from the students.

“Our first reaction is to put up [concrete] barricades, but the students would not think that way,” he said.

Keys said lighting can make it possible to identify offenders in the dark, and even the mere presence of fences and closed-circuit television cameras can discourage would-be attackers.

The novel approach is needed, Keys said, because JIATF East lacks a security feature common to most other military facilities: a large perimeter. The air station already is close to low-income housing and Fort Zachary Taylor, a tourist attraction.

Alan Mather, physical security officer for JIATF East, said the students were innovative and unencumbered by cookie-cutter approaches to security design, and they were not constrained by the “military bunker mentality — very functional but not always attractive.”

Mather said the project was mutually beneficial and challenged the students to learn about security design principles and theories and apply antiterrorism solutions.

“Everyone understands everyone’s concerns about security and tourism,” Mather said. “This is a real-world situation where students’ ideas and solutions will be implemented.”