Search Results (2)

In cases of accidental or deliberate incidents involving a harmful agent in urban areas, a detailed modelling approach is required to include the building shapes and spatial locations. Simultaneously, when applied to crisis management, a simulation tool must meet strict time constraints. This work presents a Lagrangian particle model (LPM) for computing atmospheric dispersion. The model is implemented in the nuclear decision support system ESTE CBRN, a software tool developed to calculate the atmospheric dispersion of airborne hazardous materials and radiological impacts in the built-up area. The implemented LPM is based on Thomson’s solution for the nonstationary, three-dimensional Langevin equation model for turbulent diffusion. The simulation results are successfully analyzed by testing compatibility with Briggs sigma functions in the case of continuous release. The implemented LPM is compared with the Joint Urban 2003 Street Canyon Experiment for instantaneous puff releases. We compare the maximum concentrations and peak times measured during two intensive operational periods. The modeled peak times are mostly 10–20% smaller than the measured. Except for a few detector locations, the maximum concentrations are reproduced consistently. In the end, we demonstrate via calculation on single computers utilizing general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) that the implementation is well suited for an actual emergency response since the computational times (including dispersion and dose calculation) for an acceptable level of result accuracy are similar to the modeled event duration itself. Full article

Rapid and accurate reconnaissance in the event of radiological and nuclear (RN) incidents or attacks is vital to launch an appropriate response. This need is made stronger by the increasing threat of RN attacks on soft targets and critical infrastructure in densely populated areas. In such an event, even small radioactive sources can cause major disruption to the general population. In this work, we present a real-time radiological source localization method based on an optimization problem considering a background and radiation model. Supported by extensive real-world experiments, we show that an airborne system using this method is capable for reliably locating category 3–4 radioactive sources according to IAEA safety standards in real time from altitudes up to 150 m. A sensor bundle including a LiDAR sensor, a Gamma probe as well as a communication module was mounted on a UAV that served as a carrier platform. The method was evaluated on a comprehensive set of test flights, including 28 flight scenarios over 316 min using three different radiation sources. All additional gamma sources were correctly detected, multiple sources were detected if they were sufficiently separated from each other, with the distance between the true source position and the estimated source averaging 17.1 m. We also discuss the limitations of the system in terms of detection limit and source separation. Full article