Fast, Accurate Defense for Homeland Security: Bringing High-Performance Computing to First Responders

Abstract

An urban-oriented emergency assessment system, called CT-Analyst ® was developed to evaluate airborne contaminant transport threats and to aid in making rapid decisions for complex-geometryenvironmentssuchascitieswherecurrenttransportanddispersionmethods are slow and inaccurate. Contaminant transport-Analyst was designed for the military prior to 9/11 to incorporate verbal reports, to treat systems with mobile sensors, and to function in realistic situations where the nature, amount, and source location of an airborne contaminant or a chemical, biological, or radiological agent is unknown. Thus contaminant transport-Analyst is well suited to urban defense in the Homeland Security context. Contaminant transport-Analyst gives good accuracy and much greater speed than possible with current alternatives because is it based on entirely new principles and designed to function in information-starved situations, characterizing the first few minutes of a terrorist or accident scenario, where alternate technologies do not. These advantages derive from pre-computed data structures based on three-dimensional large-eddy simulation computational fluid dynamics that includes solar heating and buoyancy, complete building geometry specification,trees,andimpressedwindfluctuations.Afewdetailedurbanaerodynamicssimulations are pre-computed for each coverage region when contaminant transport-Analyst is installed. These results extend to all wind directions, speeds, likely sources and source locationsthroughanewdatastructurecalledDispersionNomografs™.Thusahigh-performance computing based system can generate Nomografs for cities, military bases, industrial complexes,andotherpotentialdangerareaswellinadvance,removingtheneedfortheemergency first responders and warfighters to wait for supporting analyses. Furthermore, since the full power of high-performance computing is available for the pre-computations, contaminant transport-Analyst provides important, new, real-time, zero-latency functions such as sensor data fusion, backtracking to an unknown source location, and evacuation route planning directly to the first responder. Thus the Department of Homeland Security can avoid the delays and uncertainties of reachback to high-performance computing modeling resources and the associated support and communications infrastructure currently required during airborne contaminant transport emergencies.