Site Planning, Monitoring, and Analysis of Hazardous Material Releases in the Atmosphere Using the OMEGA Modeling System and EDGE Visualization Environment

An interactive processing system is described for modeling and visualizing the potential impacts of hazardous aerosols released into the atmosphere from industrial sites using Science Applications International Corporation's OMEGA atmospheric transport and weather forecast model in conjunction with Autometric Incorporated's EDGE 3-d whole Earth visualization and analysis tool. OMEGA is an unstructured, adaptive grid forecast model that can be quickly and easily configured to run for any region of the globe at very high resolutions and, combined with sophisticated model physics and a terrain-following coordinate system, is ideal for generating highly accurate air trajectories and concentration plumes on localized scales in areas of complex terrain and complex weather processes. EDGE is a powerful multi-source, multi-dimensional data analysis tool used to visualize and animate the modeled air trajectories and concentration plumes in 3-d at very high geo-spatial accuracy. EDGE is also used for integrating ancillary weather information, such as surface and upper air observations and geo-stationary and polar-orbiting satellite imagery, and other geo-locatable data sets into the same scene to give a complete and coherent scenario. Collectively, OMEGA and EDGE can be utilized for a host of practical applications ranging from site planning and assessment to real-time operational monitoring to event-based analysis.