CATS Technological Hazards

CATS Biological Scenario

Example Scenario Description

Biological Agents Effects

CATS contains utilities to model the effects of biological agent releases (from weapons or storage facilities) and resulting consequences to the population, infrastructure, and critical facilities. Such releases produce a cloud of material that is transported through the atmosphere. CATS is capable of modeling the transport, dispersion, and deposition of the material, and determining the effect of the agent on the population. CATS determines the numbers of casualties by using sophisticated health effects models, and combining these with actual United States Census Data.

Example of a Biological Weapon Effects simulation performed with CATS' Hazards Assessment and Prediction Capability (HPAC) utility.

HPAC supports a general hazard assessment utility for biological agents (as well as nuclear and chemical agents) released from NBC weapons or NBC materials released from production or storage facilities.
HPAC provides a capability for modeling winds over complex terrain and for forecasting weather, which is required for accurate hazard assessments in some locations and situations.
HPAC includes the SCIPUFF (Second-order Closure Integrated Puff) model for turublent transport, providing an efficient and accurate prediction for many types of hazard scenarios.
HPAC results are imported into CATS, overlaid upon detailed maps, and used for determining population at risk, infrastructure, casualties, and critical facilities affected.
HPAC is easily launched from within CATS:

Inputs

Definition of hazardous incident or source is created from within HPAC. The type of biological agent, its delivery system, location and incident time are chosen by the user within the HPAC architecture. In this case, the example is of a Biological Weapon attack near Chicago.
The user selects the weather data and inputs it to the model. Weather data includes quantities such as precipitation , wind speed and wind direction (in this case, provided in a wind grid format covering a user-defined area, i.e., the metropolitan Chicago area), cloud cover, etc. The example shown is for a clear, temperate day, with wind data from October 29, 1998.
HPAC also selects as input the Digital Terrain Elevation Data (DTED) appropriate to the region of interest, especially important for mountainous terrain, for example.
The user inputs all the incident data by using a simple series of GUIs, an example of which is shown below:

Outputs

Outputs include various types of color-coded "footprints" that are overlaid upon georeferenced maps.
Footprints such as agent dosage, agent concentration, mortality probability may be displayed.
The example below shows a footprint for human mortality probability resulting from time-integrated exposure to the biological agent under the weather conditions described above. Displayed are probabilities (shown as color-coded contour areas) with ranges:

<1%,
1% - 20%,
20% - 50%,
50% - 90%,
>90%.

Consequences Assessment

For CATS Technological Hazards scenarios, consequences assessment refers to determination of population at risk, infrastructure, casualties,and critical facilities lying within the extent of the hazard plume.

Population at risk refers to the total population lying within each of the plume contours. (The population data is provided with CATS and is 1990 Census Data.) This utility provides a quick and easy way to determine the total number of persons who might be in harm's way. For the example shown above, the user may determine the population at risk in each of the plume contours. The output is provided in a text report and is grouped by county:

Affected infrastructure is also provided in a text report, detailing numbers of infrastructure (whose types are selected by the user) lying within footprint areas. This example displays numbers of chemical plants, electric power plants, and natural gas plants lying within mortaility probability contour areas. Many more types of infrastructures (approximately 60 total) are available for examination.

Casualties are also provided in a text report, displaying numbers of persons (1990 Census Data) projected to suffer mortality. The casualty determination utility is one of the most powerful consequences assessment utilities in CATS, and uses state-of-the-art computer codes for determining deaths from exposure to hazardous biological agents. Casualties are modeled to occur to healthy persons in young adulthood.

The first step in performing a casualty calculation is to display and select the mortality theme in order to perform the calculation. (Casualties can only be determined with this theme, in contrast to population at risk, which can be determined with any theme.)

Next, CATS determines casualties. The output is provided in the form of a text report and is shown below. Numbers are grouped by County.

Critical facilities are shown as map data, and their availability in the aftermath of an attack or accident is determined by their proximity to the hazard plume. The figure below displays the hazard plume and nearby Chicago and Northern Indiana electric powerplants (green), water supply stations (blue diamonds), and nuclear reactor power plants. The user can click on any of the icons representing these facilities to produce their vital data: Phone Number, Hospital Name, Address, Zip Code, etc.

CATS Example Scenarios