Science Inventory

Demonstration and Evaluation of Commercial and Municipal Equipment for Urban Biological Decontamination

Citation:

Hayes, C., Michael Calfee, AND T. Boe. Demonstration and Evaluation of Commercial and Municipal Equipment for Urban Biological Decontamination. Remediation Journal. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 33(3):249-261, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1002/rem.21751

Impact/Purpose:

Manuscript outlining research effort to identify, ahead of a biological incident, commercial and municipal equipment that may have utility for remediation operations. A database of equipment was developed by subject matter experts and is hosted online (radar.epa.gov). A field-scale demonstration was held in a realistic urban setting. The manuscript describes both of these components of the the study.

Description:

Large-scale biological contamination incidents pose unique yet significant challenges to remediation operations. Previous incidents have demonstrated the utility of readily available commercial and municipal equipment for conducting remediation tasks. Pre-identification and evaluation of such equipment could reduce lag time for response initiation and enhance overall response effectiveness and efficiency. The current study aimed to identify commercial and municipal equipment that could be beneficial in wide-area biological remediation operations. Equipments were identified by market research, their utility assessed by a group of subject matter experts and a subset of those equipments were observed under operational conditions in a realistic urban environment. Observations and feedback from demonstration participants are presented herein. This information is intended to support rapid decision making following large-scale biological incidents, to broaden the universe of potentially useful equipment to support the response, to enhance response operations, and reduce the impact to the public.