THE PENTAGON SHIELD FIELD PROGRAM Toward Critical Infrastructure Protection

In the future, facilities that are probable terrorist targets may be protected by weather analysis and forecasting systems that are part of automated capabilities that warn of the approach of hazardous chemical, biological, or radiological (CBR) material in the atmosphere. Based on information provided by coupled meteorological and transport and dispersion (T&D) models and networked sensors, building ventilation systems can be adjusted in real time to minimize air infiltration, and potential evacuation routes can be identified. Such atmospheric modeling systems must represent multiple scales of motion, from the mesoscale to the building scale. In addition to meteorological data that represent this range of scales, in situ and remotely sensed information on CBR contaminants must also be ingested. Not only is this effort scientifically challenging, the computational requirements are so formidable that buildingscale, physics-based atmospheric models are not typically run operationally. Because the Pentagon is one THE PENTAGON SHIELD FIELD PROGRAM Toward Critical Infrastructure Protection