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The Analysis for Coastal Operational Resiliency (AnCOR) Wide Area Demonstration
Citation:
Boe, T., W. Calfee, P. Lemieux, L. Oudejans, M. Pirhalla, S. Serre, AND E. Silvestri. The Analysis for Coastal Operational Resiliency (AnCOR) Wide Area Demonstration . Presented at 2023 EPA International Decontamination Research and Development Conference, Charleston, SC, December 05 - 07, 2023.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of the AnCOR Program is to develop and demonstrate capabilities and strategic guidelines to prepare the U.S. for a wide-area release of a biological agent, including mitigating impacts to USCG facilities and assets. Experimental findings from the bench- and pilot-scale studies have been utilized at the field scale to address biological agent preparedness. Recently, AnCOR took bench scale science to the field during the Wide Area Demonstration (WAD) to begin developing solutions for a wide area biological agent incident. Local, tribal, state, and federal responders can benefit from this research with new information and tools, assessed at the field scale, to ensure community resilience to a wide area biological release that threatens public health and welfare.
Description:
Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of inhalation anthrax, is one of the most highly studied biological threat agents. Significant gaps remain related to the remediation of a wide area following such biological release. This extends to the remediation of critical assets owned and operated by federal partners. This abstract and presentation describe the planning, execution, data interpretation and outcomes from the Analysis for Coastal Operational Resiliency (AnCOR)’s Wide Area Demonstration (WAD) which was held in May 2022. The AnCOR WAD was a field-scale biological remediation study with the primary purpose to operationally test and evaluate options for decontamination, sampling, data management, and waste management for areas impacted by a wide area biological agent release in a US Coast Guard or urban environment. A non-pathogenic organism, Bacillus atrophaeus var. globigii (Bg), was used as the surrogate in this study. The AnCOR program is an interagency effort involving the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), and the United States Coast Guard (USCG).