Predicting A Disaster

I like to know what I’m up against.

Whether it’s weather conditions, new video games, movies, I like to know what I’m walking into, what I’m dealing with, what I can expect.  I guess you could say I’m not a fan of surprises.

So when the Naval Research Laboratory told me they have developed a technology designed to predict a disaster, I was both impressed and attracted to this idea.  I mean, a program that can explain the mitigating factors of a tragedy before I have time to panic?  Sounds like my kind of crisis management.

As it turns out, it’s attractive to first responders and the military as well.

Adam Moses is a computer scientist with the Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics, where he’s been working on a type of technology that could change the way we respond and react to a crisis situation.

It’s call the CT Analyst, which stands for Contaminate Transfer Analyst, and this baby is a high speed hypothetical possibility generator that can predict a disaster in real time.

“Basically, the CT Analyst is a chemical, biological and radiological plume model designed specifically for urban environments,” Adam explains.  “There are other tools that do this sort of work, but they’re focusing on large regions.  We want to focus on something that’s small, that’s a utility for first responders, firefighters, policemen, EMTs, etc.”

Basically, this program is designed predict the way a gas plume will travel through a city…in 3D.  Yeah that’s pretty cool.

So let’s put this into a scenario:

There’s an attack somewhere in a city.

Gas is flowing through the streets.  People are scared, in danger, hysterical.  You, as a first responder, have only minutes to react to this crisis.  Every second counts.  So what do you do first?  You find the source of the attack.  Now normally this would be a long process that includes sorting through the incoherent screaming and working within the cover of chaos, but not with the CT Analyst at the ready.

With a few simple commands this technology can accurately predict the source of the danger, where the gas will go, and what areas will be affected.  Oh, and it’s fast.  I mean lightning fast.

“Many simulations that do this kind of work will say ‘okay, give me that location, give me that direction and I’ll come up with a result’ and it will take five, ten minutes.  Except in a real instance you don’t [even] have five seconds or ten seconds.  You need something immediately.”

It’s the fastest on the market, and for a good reason.  The CT Analyst pre-calculates, so instead of actually having to come up your scenario at the time (which is not the most ideal approach to calamity containment) this technology allows the first response teams to know where the explosion is, what the wind conditions are, where the gas plume is headed.

You know, all the things that go flying through your head when you realize you’re about to be battling an intangible and potentially deadly gas.

This tool allows first responders to know exactly what they’re up against within seconds of them learning they were facing a threat in the first place.  Huh.  Well this sounds like something the military could really use, don’t you think?

It turns out that NRL is already one step ahead.

“We’re doing a lot of focusing right now on training simulators, both for law enforcement and for the military,” Adam says.  “People know about smoke bombs or a chlorine weapon of some kind but they don’t know actually what to look for in terms of symptoms.  We did a project with the secret service, and we’ve been working on some projects for the Marines.  It’s really just the push to get this tool integrated into other things.”

The National Guard has already had a taste of this technology when they collaborated with NRL to maintain order at the 2009 inauguration, and it only continues to improve.  So what kinds of scenarios can the CT Analyst really predict, anyway?

“Basically every scenario you can imagine has already been processed, so when it comes down to actually coming up with the scenario you need it’s already in there, it’s in a database it’s already in there.  You just have to look it up.”

Another advantage would be the urban landscape.  “We’re not dealing with hundreds of square miles.  We’re dealing with where you are on the street, where the fire trucks are headed, and more importantly where you can set up a triage zone, where you can put hospital tents, or whatever else you need.  You can know where that plume is headed – and where it is not – and you can plan for both instances.”

Being able to react, control and contain a crisis with time on your side?  That’s an advantage that benefits everyone.  And it gets better.  This isn’t one of those technologies that utilizes some complicated device that can only be activated in one place, and it needs a fingerprint scan or some kind of hair follicle sample or whatever.  The CT Analyst is integrated into programs many of us use every day.

“You can export all our data to Google Earth, you can import data from Google Earth,” says Adam Moses.  “A lot of other people are using our tool in a way where they never actually see what our view of the world looks like.”

It’s fast, it’s effective and it’s easy to use.  This is something that not only makes the difficult job of contending with a disaster easier, but it gives us an advantage that ever first responder could always us a little more of: time.  No one wants to contend with a disaster, but with the CT Analyst, the ability to save time, to save efforts, and to potentially save lives is making all the difference.

“CT Analyst is great,” Adam Moses says with a confident smile.  “I think it really is a sort of march to the future as far as technology like this goes.  The field of HAZMAT and first responder technology is still in its infancy in a lot of ways.  Especially in post 9/11, so there’s a lot left to be done there.  The CT Analyst can really help fill a lot of that void.”

The CT Analyst literally takes the guesswork out of a gas plume crisis, and when disaster strikes, knowing what you’re dealing with – and quickly – could be the difference between life and death.

For me?  I’m choosing life, thanks.  But that should come as no surprise.

Jessica L. Tozer is a blogger for DoDLive and Armed With Science.  She is an Army veteran and an avid science fiction fan, both of which contribute to her enthusiasm for technology in the military.

Dropsondes--Work Horses in Hurricane Forecasting

Small cylinders dropped from airplanes gather atmospheric data on their way down

Inside a cylinder that is about the size of a roll of paper towels lives a circuit board filled with sensors. It's called a dropsonde, or "sonde" for short. It's a work horse of hurricane forecasting, dropping out of "Hurricane Hunter" airplanes right into raging storms. As the sonde falls through the air, its sensors gather data about the atmosphere to help us better understand climate and other atmospheric conditions.

"Dropsondes have a huge impact on our understanding of hurricanes and our ability to predict hurricanes," explains electrical engineer Terry Hock at the Earth Observing Laboratory in the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), located in Boulder, Colo.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Hock and his colleagues at NCAR have been designing, building and improving dropsonde technology for more than 30 years. "Our most current development is a fully automated dropsonde system for NASA's unmanned Global Hawk aircraft," says Hock.

Compared to earlier models, today's sondes are lighter weight, relatively inexpensive and loaded with sensors.

"We have a lot of electronics and, on the back side, a battery pack to operate the sonde. We have a temperature and two humidity sensors, and we have a GPS receiver," explains Hock, as he points out the different circuit board components. "As the sonde moves, we're using that GPS receiver to track the sonde's movements very precisely, which is then telling us the wind speed and wind direction. At the top of the sonde is a parachute which slows down the descent."

Electrical engineer Dean Lauritsen, a member of Hock's team, developed the system software on the aircraft, which controls the aircraft data system and process, and also displays dropsonde data during the sondes free fall to earth. There's such a system on the HIAPER, the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream V Research Aircraft, which uses sondes for scientific research, and a similar system used by the U.S. Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunters in Biloxi, Miss., and the NOAA Hurricane Hunters in Tampa, Fla. On board each aircraft are a computer and a rack of electronic equipment to monitor and receive information from sondes. "The system is capable of tracking as many as eight dropsondes in the air at the same time. Each one of them is transmitting data on a separate frequency as it falls." says Lauritsen.

From the time the sonde leaves the aircraft, it is checking surroundings two times a second and sending information back to the aircraft, including pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction. Future developments are expected to include sensors for chemicals such as ozone.

"We're taking vertical slices of the atmosphere constantly as the sonde falls," says Hock. "We're seeing very precise single measurements show up immediately on the computer screen."

Researchers process the information using NCAR-developed custom software, and then send it to weather forecasters and researchers around the world. In the case of the Hurricane Hunters, the information goes to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

NCAR software engineer Charlie Martin develops custom software called ASPEN, which stands for Atmospheric Sounding Processing Environment. ASPEN helps make sense of all the dropsonde data. "Once the dropsonde has fallen through the atmosphere and the data has come back to the aircraft, that raw data needs a little more treatment before we send it to weather services around the world," explains Martin.

Martin points to a map showing a compilation of dropsonde wind data collected in August 2011, as Hurricane Irene was churning its way toward the Florida coast. "The winds are in a circular pattern," says Martin, as he identifies small triangles on the map that represent the wind and wind direction. "The center of the hurricane is clearly depicted in the center of the circular pattern. The National Hurricane Center uses this data along with other data to classify the hurricane and assign a category to it."

Hock and his team also custom fit aircraft with launchers to deploy the sondes, including one system for helium-filled balloons. In 2010, American and French researchers deployed balloons over Antarctica that dropped 600 sondes over a four-month period to study atmospheric conditions and the shifting ozone layer. "There is now a very dense set of measurements that came out of this project that has mapped the Antarctic atmosphere like it has never been done before," notes Martin.

"Atmospheric conditions above the Antarctic continent are hard to study since only a handful of sounding stations are regularly maintained there," says Peter Milne, program manager for ocean and atmospheric sciences within NSF's Office of Polar Programs. "Fortunately, the Antarctic polar vortex, a huge cyclone that sets up above the entire continent, is like the NASCAR of long distance ballooning, with balloons sweeping around the continent for as long as they stay aloft. Using these drifting platforms provided a unique data set."

Such "inside information" is helping scientists learn more about climate and hurricanes. Data from dropsondes is also giving scientists a better understanding about atmospheric conditions that spawn any number of weather conditions. Hock expects this will help forecasters make earlier and more precise hurricane predictions, giving people in the path of a killer storm more time to get out of harm's way.

Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent

Ann Kellan, Science Nation Producer

Strong As Steel, Light As Plastic

As a global force, the U.S. military is called upon to conduct missions that subject its platforms to extreme operational environments and structural loads.

The endurance and performance of future Department of Defense platforms may call for the availability of materials with structural properties that significantly surpass the limits of what is achievable with current technology. Material properties include strength, density and stiffness, among many others.

DARPA’s Materials with Controlled Microstructural Architecture (MCMA) program seeks the capability to develop materials with properties tailored to meet specific mission requirements. For instance, as demonstrated in this video, DARPA was able to construct a material so light that it can rest atop a bubble.

MCMA researchers are working toward the goal of developing a material that is as strong as steel, but as light as a plastic.

Observe:

Video provided by DARPATV

Battlefield M.R.I.s

Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines stateside allow medical staff to get a better look at tissue in the human body, including the brain. The M.R.I. trailer in Kandahar, Afghanistan allows battlefield doctors to traumatic brain injury and its effects on service members on the front lines.

Video provided by American Forces Network Afghanistan