What Responders Need to Respond

摘要

Developing equipment and instrumentation for use by first responders and HAZMAT professionals in a Homeland Defense role requires an understanding of the real needs of those responders. These needs are driven by the manner in which the incident response takes place and how the response actions occur over time. This paper describes a chemical terrorist incident, the response functions and related timelines, and the detection and identification needs during each phase. From this information, developers will be able to better understand requirements related to sensitivity, specificity, response time, weight, ruggedness, ease of use, and other design parameters.