New Sensor Network Sniffs Cities for Bioweapons
March 17 -- Here's the scene: Terrorists release deadly chemicals into the air near a major metropolitan center, creating a killer plume that is drifting with the wind toward millions of unsuspecting citizens. But within minutes, authorities from the president down to the local firefighters know what the chemicals are, where the plume is heading, and how to best cope with the unfolding crisis.
At the same time hospitals throughout the area receive the same information, and nearby jurisdictions are alerted to the probable need for assistance.
And it all happens automatically.
Sound too good to be true? Not to the people at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. They've already developed just such a system locally.
Work in Progress
"It works," says John Strand, a telecommunications expert who is heading up the lab's efforts to promote what it calls "SensorNet" on a national scale.
Chemical, biological, and radiological sensors have been installed in three eastern Tennessee cities — Nashville, Knoxville and Oak Ridge, as well as in New York City, Washington, D.C., and at Fort Bragg, N.C. The sensors are tied into a telecommunications network that collects data from all sorts of places, thus giving users the ability to compare various types of information and limit the false positives that inevitably occur on any early warning system.
The program was unveiled last week for Frank Libutti, a top official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who told Tennessee authorities he would direct his staff to look into the feasibility of establishing a national network patterned after the Oak Ridge program.
Strand is a "hands-on" kind of executive who directed Sprint's development of a broadband communications program, and he is clearly optimistic about the future of SensorNet. He estimates it would cost from $5 billion to $6 billion to expand the program nationally.
But this is clearly a work in progress, so it is being designed in such a way that it can evolve over time as new technology emerges. Not all chemicals, or biological materials, can be detected by remote sensors. Sometimes it takes days, or even weeks, to positively identify a specific substance.
