Project: NPRP 7 – 674 – 2 – 252 (Award Active )

Title: Advanced emergency preparedness and response tools for airborne hazardous materials in urban environments

Duration: 3 Year(s)
Start Date: 3/1/2015 12:00:00 AM
Submitting Institution: Texas A&M University at Qatar
Research Area: 2. Engineering and Technology
Speciality: 2.11 Other Engineering and Technology
Sub Speciality: Other Engineering and Technologies

Project Description:
The atmospheric release of hazardous materials in urban environment can be the result of an accident with potential consequences in local or regional scale or can be an intentional act of violence. In all cases, these events raise concerns for public health and in general for the community’s welfare. Additionally, in such cases the highest uncertainty is associated with the location of the release and the quantity of the released substance. The proposed project aims at advancing the state-of-the-art in this direction and developing tools in order to locate the source and quantify the release rate in the case of acute chemical and biological incidents in urban environments. More specifically, the project will deal with the following three specific aspects of the problem: i) how to correlate and convert health observations – symptoms – like coughing, headaches, asthma attacks and deaths to doses received and air concentration levels of hazardous substances, ii) what numerical techniques to combine with computational fluid dynamics models to locate and quantify the release of hazardous material and iii) how to combine local and regional atmospheric dispersion models in the case that the source is outside the urban domain – airshed. To achieve the general aim, the project team will provide a rigorous description of hazardous material accidental events based on an integrated approach by developing efficient numerical and biomedical techniques. The development of the tools will be based on data assimilation algorithms and numerical techniques able to describe the source characteristics. Biomedical databases and models will be employed in order to translate observations to useful input data for the atmospheric dispersion models. Computational fluid dynamic approaches will be formulated and tested to resolve the wind flow inside the complex urban terrain, necessary for the dispersion models. This system of models and data assimilation algorithms will aim to solve the inverse problem of the estimation of the unknown quantity and location of airborne hazards release using biomedical information. Finally, the models will be validated through a series of literature experimental datasets and multiple scenarios dealing with accidental and malevolent releases in local scale and in complex terrains. The developed tools, when embedded in an integrated system, will be able to improve the accuracy and efficiency of an emergency response management system and also to be used for the training of the preparedness mechanism. In any country, but especially in those where there are intensive industrial activities and transport of hazardous materials, as well as other geopolitical reasons, the subject of emergency response is of considerable safety and security interest for the crisis management. The results of this project are expected to produce valuable emergency management tools for the timely and effective response in order to minimize the harm and loss.

QNRFLogoEn

National Center for Scientific Research 'Demokritos'

National Center for Scientific Research ‘Demokritos’

supreme council of health qatar

supreme council of health qatar

Ukrainian Center of Environmental and Water Projects

Ukrainian Center of Environmental and Water Projects