Understanding vulnerabilities within water and wastewater utilities is critical to protecting the health and safety of our citizens and our nation’s water supply.

VSAT 6.0VULNERABILITY SELF ASSESSMENT TOOL

PurposeThe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Vulnerability Self Assessment Tool (VSAT) Version 6.0 is designed to assist water and wastewater utilities of all sizes with determining vulnerabilities to both man-made and natural hazards, and with evaluating potential improvements to enhance their security and resilience. Utilities can use VSAT 6.0 to update current risk assessments and ensure that they are ready to meet the increasing safety and security challenges of the future.

FeaturesVSAT 6.0 has significant enhancements over earlier versions of this tool:

Meets Water Sector Standard. EPA has developed VSAT 6.0 to be consistent with the ANSI/AWWA J100-10 Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection (RAMCAP) Standard for Risk and Resilience Management of Water and Wastewater Systems. To meet this standard, VSAT 6.0 includes quantitative risk and resilience metrics, asset prioritization and a new threat category to assess interdependencies.

Easy to Use. To assist small systems and new users in building an assessment, VSAT now includes a New AnalysisWizard with suggested default assessments for common utility assets, countermeasures and threats. Plus, data from SEMS (Security and Emergency Management System) assessments can be imported directly into VSAT.

As stated in the 2013 National Infrastructure Protection Plan, “The national effort to strengthen critical infrastructure security and resilience depends on the ability of critical infrastructure owners and operators to make risk-informed decisions when allocating limited resources.” Accordingly, EPA strongly encourages water and wastewater utility owners and operators to use VSAT 6.0 to conduct or update an all-hazards risk assessment.

SAFETY Act Designation for VSAT 6.0The Department of Homeland Security has approved a Block Designation for risk assessments performed using VSAT 6.0 under the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act. Entities using VSAT 6.0 to conduct risk assessments of water, wastewater or combined utilities may apply for SAFETY Act protections, which can limit liability for claims resulting from an act of terrorism. Please see the Block Designation list at www.safetyact.gov for additional information and application instructions.

For More InformationVSAT 6.0, along with a series of basic and advanced training videos, is now available at http://water.epa.gov/infrastructure/watersecurity/techtools/

vsat.cfm. For more information, email VSATHelp@epa.gov.

Off ice of Water (4608-T) | EPA 817-F-14-005 | September 2014