HOMELAND SECURITY SUPPORT
Impact/Purpose:
The scientific modeling expertise of NERL/AMD technical staff often results in requests for staff to provide timely support and advice to EPA Management in the event of a national emergency and to perform the research on model development and evaluation in support of the development of early response models. Flow and dispersion in urban areas is extremely complex and not well characterized in spite of their importance to homeland security and emergency response applications. Specifically, understanding the transport and fate of pollutants in urban canopies is critical for implementing air quality standards, performing risk assessments, developing environmental management strategies, supporting human exposure and health effects studies. Recently, though, much focus has been placed on supporting the development of homeland security tools needed to prepare for and respond to malicious attacks with toxic chemicals. Toward this goal, laboratory studies have been conducted in EPA's Meteorological Wind Tunnel for idealized urban settings, for very complex settings such as lower Manhattan surrounding the World Trade Center (WTC) site, and for very building specific cases such as the Pentagon. Continued studies in a variety of urban morphologies and release scenarios are needed to support a more thorough understanding of urban dispersion and the development of refined numerical modeling approaches.
Description:
The goal of this Task is twofold. The first goal is to improve our atmospheric modeling support in the event of a national emergency, and the second goal is to improve our understanding of atmospheric processes important in urban dispersion and response applications.
Record Details:
Record Type:PROJECT
Start Date:09/01/2005
Projected Completion Date:09/01/2008
Record ID:
113787
Keywords:
AIR QUALITY MODELS, HOMELAND SECURITY, PHYSICAL MODELING,
Project Information:
Progress
:New Task
Relevance
:Urban Neighborhood study: As part of an effort to improve the agency's understanding of urban dispersion and to improve the modeling of urban homeland security scenarios, the Fluid Modeling Facility will perform a wind tunnel study to examine the flow and dispersion environment in a typical urban neighborhood based on an area within Brooklyn. This wind tunnel study will be coordinated with a field study focusing on releases (traffic pollution sources and simulated "malicious" releases) along a four lane expressway passing through the neighborhood..
The Manhattan studies: The Urban Dispersion Program is conducting several major field studies in Midtown Manhattan to establish flow and dispersion patterns in complex urban street canyons to support both the general overall science of urban dispersion and the development of tools for homeland security. The wind tunnel studies are an important component of this urban flows program in that detailed measurements (well beyond the level of the field studies) can be obtained and the conditions for sampling controlled.
Near Roadway Dispersion Studies: The findings from recent epidemiological studies near major roadways have stimulated an increased interest in the dispersion of pollutants and their potential impacts on nearby residents. To develop a better understanding of this pollutant source scenario and to support the development or roadway models, a series of wind-tunnel studies are planned to examine the wide variety of morphologies related to roadway emissions (i.e., elevated highways, road cuts, sound barriers, etc…).
NYC UDP Program. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is committed to using cutting edge technologies and scientific talent in its quest to make America safer. The DHS Directorate of Science and Technology (S&T) is tasked with researching and organizing the scientific, engineering, and technological resources of the United States and leveraging these existing resources into technological tools to help protect the homeland.
Clients
:ORD
Project IDs:
ID Code
:20467
Project type
:OMIS