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  • Keyword = 'homeland security’ AND ’water security' NOT (presentation OR poster).
Records 1 to 25 of 396

2025
Geospatial capabilities to couple hazard and social vulnerability data in water distribution criticality analysis
(JOURNAL) [Published : Feb 01, 2025]
A resilience analysis of a water distribution system is greatly enhanced by the integration of up-to-date geospatial data describing the water system, hazards, and surrounding community. The Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR), an open-source Python package designed to simul...
2024
Degradation of Immediate Precursors of Fentanyl and Fentalogs
(JOURNAL) [Published : Jul 01, 2024]
Remediation of clandestine laboratory and processing operations for fentanyl and its analogs (i.e., fentalogs) may involve application of oxidants, most commonly household hypochlorite bleach, to chemically degrade the fentanyl to enable disposition of the site. While the chemica...
Effects of aging of radioactive fallout on timely decontamination of concrete using low and mild pressure washing
(JOURNAL) [Published : Jul 30, 2024]
Timely decontamination will reduce the consequences of a radiological contamination event. For this purpose, pressure washing can be rapidly deployed, but its effectiveness will change if the interactions between the surface and radionuclides changes as the contamination “ages” u...
Fate of Radioactive Fallout Particles in Water Treatment Systems and its Filtration in Sand Filter Beds
(PAPER IN NON-EPA PROCEEDINGS) [Published : Mar 14, 2024]
Radioactive fallout could have debilitating effects on drinking water and wastewater systems. Some drinking water system operators have plans to mitigate the effects of a water source contaminated with fallout, but most, if not all, wastewater operators have no such plans. Litera...
Vacuum assisted PFAS extraction from water
(SUMMARY) [Published : Oct 11, 2024]
Aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) delivery systems in aircraft hangars and firefighting vehicles may require thorough cleaning to avoid ongoing environmental impacts from residual per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) within those systems. Cleaning often involves rinsing cont...
2023
Characterizing Bacillus globigii as a Bacillus anthracis surrogate for wastewater treatment studies and bioaerosol emissions
(JOURNAL) [Published : Dec 01, 2023]
This study characterized Bacillus globigii (BG) as a Bacillus anthracis Sterne (BAS) surrogate for wastewater treatment-related studies of UV inactivation, adsorption onto powdered activated carbon (PAC), and bioaerosol emission. The inactivation of BG was faster than that of BAS...
Conventional Models Cannot Confidently Predict Resuspension of Contamination Fallout in the Emergency Phase – 23264
(PAPER IN NON-EPA PROCEEDINGS) [Published : Mar 02, 2023]
The resuspension of radioactively contaminated particles from surfaces such as foliage and roadways is handled in a simple fashion by current models that use a site-specific resuspension factor, calculated from data from air samplers and ground sensors averaged over many location...
Conventional Plume and Fallout Models and the Problem of Resuspension in the Emergency Phase
(PAPER IN NON-EPA PROCEEDINGS) [Published : Nov 15, 2023]
The resuspension of radioactively contaminated particles from surfaces such as foliage and roadways is handled in a simple fashion by current models that use a site-specific resuspension factor, calculated from data from air samplers and ground sensors averaged over many location...
Full-Scale Cybersecurity Build Out Plans and Cost Estimate
(PUBLISHED REPORT) [Published : Jul 31, 2023]
The Water Security Test Bed (WSTB) is a full-scale representation of a drinking water distribution pipe that conveys potable water. It is the product of a partnership between Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  Currently, the syste...
General filtration bed design for water contaminated with radioactive cesium
(SUMMARY) [Published : Feb 21, 2023]
The timely decontamination of high-density urban areas is critical in the face of a terror event involving radioactive cesium (Cs), which has a 30- year half-life with an energetic 662 keV gamma ray released during decay. This technical brief is intended for local, state and fede...
Modeling Strategies to Identify Water Distribution System Sampling Locations
(SUMMARY) [Published : Nov 28, 2023]
The delivery of safe, potable water to communities is the primary objective of drinking water utilities. However, the quality of the water can deteriorate as it is transported from the treatment plant through the distribution system to the customers due to interactions with the p...
Performance and Resilience Analysis of a New York Drinking Water System to Localized and System-Wide Emergencies
(JOURNAL) [Published : Jan 31, 2023]
Drinking water utilities are vulnerable to both human-caused and natural disasters that can impact the system infrastructure and the delivery of potable water to consumers. Resilience analysis can help utilities identify high-risk areas in their system and understand how to bette...
Pressure Washing Surfaces Contaminated with Fixed or Loose Radioactive Material: Best Practices for Urban Surfaces
(SUMMARY) [Published : Feb 23, 2023]
This brief provides operating information based on reviewed field experience [1] and laboratory experiments [2-5]. While it discusses general safety, this technical brief does not discuss the safe operation of pressurized sprayer equipment to avoid physical hazards which are typi...
Radiological Recovery Logistics Tool (RRLT)
(DATA/SOFTWARE) [Published : Feb 01, 2023]
The RRLT database includes detailed information on the equipment’s everyday function, its effectiveness on different surfaces and forms of radioactive contaminants, the scale for which the equipment may be applied, the skill required of the operator, utility requirements, legal a...
Resilience analysis and emergency response evaluation for drinking water systems
(JOURNAL) [Published : Jun 01, 2023]
Drinking water utilities are vulnerable to both human-caused and natural disasters that can impact the system infrastructure and the delivery of potable water to consumers. Resilience analysis can help utilities identify high-risk areas in their system and understand how to bette...
Strategies to minimize sediment contamination and transport in distribution systems
(PUBLISHED REPORT) [Published : Jul 31, 2023]
Drinking water storage tanks serve several important functions, which include but are not limited to providing an adequate water supply in the case of firefighting emergencies, power outages, water main breaks, or other system failures. The water level elevation in storage tanks ...
Water Infrastructure Resilience Evaluation Using WNTR
(SUMMARY) [Published : Sep 01, 2023]
Drinking water utilities face multiple challenges, including aging infrastructure, water quality concerns, pipe breaks, natural disasters, environmental emergencies, and terrorist attacks. All of these have the potential to disrupt service to customers and damage critical infrast...
Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) User Manual Version 1.0
(PUBLISHED REPORT) [Published : Sep 01, 2023]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Sandia National Laboratories have developed the Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) to quantify resilience of drinking water distribution systems. WNTR is a Python package designed to simulate disaster scenarios and analyze impact...
2022
Chapter 12: Water Network Tool for Resilience
(BOOK CHAPTER) [Published : Jun 01, 2022]
This chapter introduces the Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) and how it can be used to evaluate drinking water distribution system (WDS) resilience. At the end of this chapter, the reader will be able to install and run WNTR, set up and run various disaster scenario simul...
Logistics Simulation of a Remediation Effort for a Hypothetical Radiological Contamination Scenario
(JOURNAL) [Published : Dec 01, 2022]
To mitigate the effects following a large-scale nuclear or radiological material release in an urban environment and to expedite recovery, the Integrated Wash-Aid Treatment Emergency Reuse System (IWATERS) was developed. IWATERS consists of three operations: washing contaminated ...
Modeling radionuclide transport in urban overland flow: A case study
(JOURNAL) [Published : Jan 26, 2022]
This paper presents the process used to develop an overland flow model of radionuclide transport following an aerosol deposition from a hypothetical radiological dispersal device explosion. The process included the integration of digital elevation, building, and land cover inform...
Persistence of Surrogates for High Consequence Viral and Bacterial Pathogens in a Pilot-Scale Activated Sludge Treatment System
(JOURNAL) [Published : Oct 07, 2022]
This study utilizes organism viability to evaluate the persistence of three pathogen surrogates in bio-contaminated wastewater using a pilot-scale activated sludge treatment (AST) system, operated to perform like a large-scale wastewater treatment process. The persistence of hig...
Protocol for Collection of Water Samples for Detection of Pathogens and Biothreat Agents
(PUBLISHED REPORT) [Published : Sep 30, 2022]
This document describes procedures for collecting and concentrating water samples in a field setting for waterborne pathogen and biothreat agent detection. The methods describe water sampling by concentrating large volumes of water in the field via dead-end ultrafiltration (DEUF)...
Resilience analysis of potable water service after power outages in the U.S. Virgin Islands
(JOURNAL) [Published : Dec 01, 2022]
The two Category-5 hurricanes that impacted the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2017 exposed critical infrastructure vulnerabilities that needs to be addressed. While the water utility has first-hand knowledge about how the hurricanes impacted their systems, the use of modeling and simula...
Updated Content for the Water Infrastructure Decontamination Section of the Emergency Response Research Website
(SUMMARY) [Published : Jun 30, 2022]
The Homeland Security Research Program's Emergency Response Reserch website is being updated.  This document provides content for the Infrastrcuture Decontamination section of the website update.