Sensor Systems for Biological Agent Attacks: Protecting Buildings and Military Bases

摘要

The past decade has seen a growing concern about the potential for biological attacks on this nation's homeland and its military facilities. This concern was dramatically underscored by the events in the fall of 2001. The attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon made clear terrorists interest in mass casualties rather than smaller events to call attention to their cause. And the introduction of B. anthracis into the U.S. mail showed a willingness by some to use biological agents and also demonstrated their ability to develop or acquire relatively high-grade agent. Fortunately, during the past decade the nation had also invested significantly in developing technology to detect and respond to such a biological attack. As a result of this investment, it is now possible to detect and identify biological agents in time (tens of minutes to hours) to pretreat potential victims before the onset of symptoms, thereby greatly reducing the consequences of most attacks. However, these time scales are still too long to enable the occupants of a facility to take some action to minimize their exposure for example, by altering airflow in a facility, sheltering in place, or evacuating the facility. Realizing the attractiveness of certain facilities as targets of biological attack and the desirability of minimizing the effects of any such attack not just by early treatment of exposed personnel but also by detection in time to minimize such exposures, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) chartered a study to examine the path to 'detect to warn' sensors for facility protection. Specifically, DTRA asked that the study examine representative scenarios for facility protection, elucidate the driving sensor requirements, identify detection technologies and systems that have the potential for meeting those requirements, and chart a roadmap for attaining those capabilities.