Urban dispersion modeling for emergency response: status and issues

The past decade has seen rapid development of tools to predict the spread of hazardous airborne materials in urban areas. A wide range of urban weather and urban dispersion models is now available for emergency responders and for other purposes. This presentation surveys the current status and issues in this field, and provides an overview of supporting laboratory studies, field studies, and urban morphology data acquisition; model development and evaluation; and operational applications of these tools.

The presentation includes a description of some applications of urban models for responding to actual airborne releases, preparation for support to particular events, and preparation to protect particular buildings.