Protecting communities from chemical warfare agents

Abstract

What do you do if there is an accident involving Sarin nerve gas and you are part of the team responsible for protecting thousands of people in the path of this deadly chemical plume? Emergency operations personnel at chemical weapons stockpile sites within the continental United States know exactly what to do. They rely on WebPuff, a state-of-the-art decision support system sponsored by the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity (CMA)1 and developed by IEM, a security consulting firm based in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park. WebPuff is used by military and civilian jurisdictions within the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program (CSEPP), which is jointly managed by the U.S. Army and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). WebPuff provides users at CSEPP sites with a suite of planning and response tools that are integrated with a unique chemical dispersion model that provides an advanced level of science on which decisions about public protection can be based. Incorporating real-time and forecast weather, topography data, and current toxicity standards, WebPuff's dispersion model provides the most realistic plume prediction in less than two minutes - enabling military installations to meet a five-minute criterion for notifying civilian jurisdictions of an impending threat. WebPuff's chemical dispersion model has been independently tested and certified by scientists at Dugway Proving Ground [1, 2]. WebPuff incorporates a shared framework for risk management among independently managed military and civil jurisdictions at each site as well as a common understanding of how to plan for and, if necessary, respond to the threat that faces communities around chemical weapons stockpile sites every day. In developing the system, CMA and IEM gained consensus from both military and civilian users on operational requirements, business rules, and detailed designs for reports and computer displays that are foundational to the system. WebPuff provides users with information that is organized - primarily through visual means - around a common understanding of the threat and a common concept of operations. Moreover, it is a cost-effective solution to emergency preparedness and response because it is built using 100% open-source technology - the customer pays no third-party license fees. The system meets Department of Defense security and interoperability requirements - military bases using the system can communicate securely and effectively with civilian emergency management organizations. As a result, WebPuff is Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP) certified with a current Authority to Operate (ATO) on Army networks. To ensure interoperability with civilian jurisdictions, the system uses the Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) developed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). Nearly ten years after its fielding, WebPuff continues to evolve to meet emerging standards and operational concepts and CSEPP communities are still using the system. Its ability to provide trusted results quickly and to truly facilitate cooperation and collaboration among diverse organizations during disaster response has been, and continues to be, the key to its success. While WebPuff was originally designed to support preparedness for chemical weapons accidents, it represents a unique framework, models, and components that can be customized and extended for use with other hazards and other concepts of operations.