The National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) is an operational system, which provides detailed predictions of the consequences of atmospheric releases of hazardous materials for real-time emergency response, pre-planning, and post-incident assessments. NARAC provides federal, state, and local agencies, emergency planners and responders, public health officials and other users with critical information on which to base life-and-death decisions on safe zones for incident command posts, sheltering-in-place or evacuation advisories, the need for protective equipment, and utilization of hospital and health care resources. NARAC currently supports on the order of 5-10 alerts and emergencies, 100 interactive exercises, and 2000 automated responses each year.
The NARAC system incorporates a hierarchy of models in order to support different types of release events, distance scales, and response times. This suite includes deployable models for rapid-response and hazard assessment (HOTSPOT, EPICode), the core operational regional-scale models (ADAPT/LODI and COAMPS), specialized models (e.g., nuclear blast and fallout), and a computational fluid dynamics model for building-to-urban scale simulations. NARAC’s modeling capabilities are supported by a real-time meteorological data acquisition system and extensive global databases of geographical, land-use/land-cover, source term and dose response, and population information. Users request, view, and distribute NARAC predictions though the NARAC iClient and the newly developed NARAC Web software. The system is supported 24x7 by on-duty or on-call operational and technical staff at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
NARAC is currently collaborating with a number of other institutions to develop and/or integrate new capabilities for treating releases in urban areas, including residential and commercial building infiltration models (LBNL), an empirical building-scale model (U.K. Ministry of Defense’s Dstl), the CAMEO/ALOHA toxic industrial chemical hazmat system (NOAA/EPA), and radiological/nuclear, chemical, and biological source term and dose response models (SNL/ECBC). NARAC is also developing situation analysis, event reconstruction, and a next-generation CFD modeling system for future operations.
NARAC is expanding its user base to support a wide variety of local, state, and federal agencies. NARAC currently is working with 80 iClient users and over 300 Web users in 13 states. Under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Local Integration of NARAC with Cities (LINC) program, pilot projects are underway in Seattle, New York City, Albuquerque, Fort Worth, and Cincinnati to integrate NARAC capabilities with local emergency management agencies and responders. As part of this program in 2003, NARAC supported a major national exercise (TOPOFF2 in Seattle) and the real-world Staten Island barge fire (New York City). NARAC is also collaborating with Argonne National Laboratory to provide above-ground modeling for the operational PROTECT subway crisis management system.
Acknowledgement. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract No. W-7405-Eng-48.
* Corresponding author address: Gayle Sugiyama, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, P.O. Box 808, L-103, Livermore, CA 94551, e-mail: sugiyama@llnl.gov
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