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Atmospheric release prediction capability LINCs with Seattle



In the aftermath of Sept. 11 and ensuing anthrax threats, the Lab has proposed an atmospheric release assessment program that could help put the minds of city and county officials, worried about the release of airborne chemical and biological agents in their jurisdictions, at ease.

The Local Integration of National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) with Cities (LINC) program, funded by the NNSA’s Chemical and Biological National Security Program, will provide local agencies with chemical and biological agent atmospheric plume prediction capabilities for emergency planning and response.

Seattle has been selected as the first pilot city to demonstrate this new technology.

NARAC has partnered with Public Technology Inc. (PTI), a non-profit technology organization of the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, and the International City/County Management Association.

"We have a number of cities and counties that would like to be the next demonstration jurisdiction," said Don Ermak, leader of the Lab’s Atmospheric Release Assessment Program, part of the Energy and Environment Directorate.

The objective is to provide local government agencies with an advanced operational atmospheric plume prediction capability that can be integrated with appropriate federal agency support for homeland security applications.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have heightened the concern about the release of airborne chemical and biological agents in urban environments. NARAC staff members say that a chemical or biological agent release in an urban area can extend out to large portions of a city and even the surrounding suburbs depending on the type of agent, size of release, dissemination mechanism and meteorological conditions.

"This program allows multiple jurisdictions to effectively share information about the areas and populations at risk," Ermak said. "Prompt predictions must be available during an event so that first responders can determine what protective actions need to be taken, what critical facilities may be at risk and safe locations where incident command posts can be set up."

In the initial stages of the project, NARAC tools and services will be provided to pilot cities and counties to map plumes from terrorism threats. Support to these local agencies is being coordinated through PTI and will include training and customized support for exercises, special events and general emergencies.

NARAC is a national emergency response service for planning, real-time assessments and detailed studies of incidents involving nuclear, chemical, biological or natural hazardous material. The center’s main function is to support the DOE and the Department of Defense for radiological releases.

When a hazardous material is accidentally released into the atmosphere, NARAC scientists can map the probable spread of contamination in time for an emergency manager to decide if taking protective action is necessary. Since 1979, NARAC has responded to more than 160 alerts, accidents and disasters and supported more than 850 exercises.

Initial predictions using the end user’s computer are available in less than a minute, while fully automated NARAC central system predictions can be delivered in five to 10 minutes. NARAC predictions can easily be distributed to multiple users such as local, state and federal government agencies.

"PTI links federal government initiatives with local governments that are willing and able to pilot, demonstrate, and utilize various technologies," said Ronda Mosley-Rovi, PTI’s director of Environmental Programs. "LINC, as one of these initiatives, has the potential to save lives within our cities and counties by arming our first responders with a powerful tool that allows them to correctly chart the path of airborne materials and to quickly plan an appropriate response."

During the first year of LINC, the Lab and PTI have partnered with the City of Seattle to integrate NARAC technology with existing local agency technology and then test, evaluate and demonstrate the operational capability for emergency preparedness and response to chemical or biological urban terrorism. Eventually, the system would integrate city-county-state-federal operational emergency response.

NARAC has a distributed set of plume modeling and geographical information display software tools available to end users.

Tools include:
• Questionnaires to allow users to enter the information necessary to describe a real or potential atmospheric release of radiological, chemical or biological material and request a plume prediction.
• Fast-running local-scale plume models for initial hazard zone estimates on the end user’s computer.
• Internet-based and web-based tools for accessing the advanced plume model predictions from NARAC over several types of communications links (public or private network, dial-up, wireless).
• Software to display model plume predictions of areas affected by air and ground contamination, potential health effects and affected population counts along with multiple, detailed geographical information layers such as roads, cities, buildings and bodies of water.

Users can obtain model results from the automated NARAC system without the NARAC staff involved although the staff is on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide scientific and technical assistance and training.

Earlier this year, NARAC researchers created a three-dimensional simulation of how a biological or chemical release could spread in and around Salt Lake City. The simulation was not created in response to any known threat. Rather, it was made to display how a dangerous airborne substance would flow around downtown buildings.

Besides accidental radiological releases, such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, NARAC has assessed natural disasters such as volcanic ash clouds (Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines) and earthquake-induced hazardous spills. The center also forecasted the path of smoke plumes from the Kuwaiti oil fires during the Gulf War and several toxic chemical accidents including the Tracy tire fire in 1999.

May 24, 2002

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Anne M. Stark