This eighth volume of both NCHRP Report 525: "Surface Transportation Security" and TCRP Report 86: "Public Transportation Security" is designed to assist transportation agencies in evaluating and modifying existing plans, policies, and procedures, as called for in the National Incident Management System (NIMS). In his September 8, 2004, letter to state governors, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge wrote that "NIMS provides a consistent nationwide approach for Federal, State, territorial, tribal, and local governments to work effectively and efficiently together to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents, regardless of cause, size, or complexity." The objective of this volume is to provide guidelines for state and local transportation agencies to develop, implement, maintain, train for, and exercise Continuity of Operations (COOP) capabilities. The guidelines are expected to be applied by designated agency continuity planners using templates to customize COOP plans for their local conditions. The templates and guidelines should provide a managed and measurable process to ensure continuation of essential operations. Execution of these plans helps transportation agencies ensure the performance of critical services even in an operating environment that is threatened, diminished, or incapacitated. The planning guidelines in this report are supplemented online with downloadable worksheets, a template for a completed COOP plan, a series of brochures that can be used to explain the COOP planning process to staff, a draft PowerPoint presentation that may be customized and presented to transportation executive leadership, and more than 300 resource documents organized in an electronic COOP library. (Author/publisher) This report may be accessed by Internet users at http://gulliver.trb.org/publications/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_525v8.pdf
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