Emergency response models: An outline of capabilities

[摘要] The Accident Reporting and Guiding Operational System (ARGOS) is a decision making tool designed for biological, chemical or nuclear accident scenarios. It is currently used by the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency and Country Fire Authority for airborne hazard planning. The ARGOS system has many advantages and can be set up to run quickly, providing initial results from a local area (10-20 km) within 2 to 5 minutes. ARGOS was used to predict smoke dispersion from the recent Hazelwood mine fire. However, the ARGOS system lacks the ability to calculate particulate dispersion, the concentration of pollutants indoors, or an inverse capability allowing the source term to be back-calculated. Other systems currently need to be run in order to provide this additional information. The purpose of this report is to investigate whether there is a system available globally which can do the job of ARGOS and include the three capabilities listed above. The models examined are: the Australian Smoke Forecasting System (AFSF, Australia), the Tool for Assessing Pest and Pathogen Aerial Spread (TAPPAS, Australia), The Hybrid Single Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLT, USA), the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC, USA), and the Numerical Atmospheric dispersion Modelling Environment (NAME, UK).Both HYSPLIT and NAME models offer an inverse capability. The licenced version of HYSPLIT has qualities which could be of use in emergency response situations in Victoria, and there is plenty of online support and training available. The NAME model is extremely complex (whilst comprehensive) and will not provide answers on a 5 minute timescale. However there is potential that elements of the NAME model can be included in a future release of the ARGOS system.The US NARAC system is the only model to offer a calculation of the indoor air concentrations, but in US building types only. However it appears that this system is predominantly for use in-house and that the expertise of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is used. The indoor air calculation is not complex and requires data on the exchange of air between indoors and outdoors (i.e. through vents in homes), for Australian building types. This parameterisation could be added easily to other modelling systems.The Australian TAPPAS system is a biological dispersion model which uses HYSPLIT as its base. It is unlikely to be a suitable replacement for ARGOS. The ASFS is a comprehensive forecasting system, but for smoke only. It has a number of layers of forecast times and complexity, one of which is a faster 24-hour forecast for planned burns dispersion. Whilst this could be useful in future, at present it requires input of background concentrations from a more complex chemical transport modelling system to examine how polluted an airshed is before a burn starts.

[发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)