Sensor Networks for NBC Threats

Nerdsville writes "Planet Analog have an article describing research into a nationwide sensor network that could provide a real-time early-warning system for chemical, biological and nuclear threats across the US. Researchers plan to use microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology to create accurate biological and chemical sensors. Linked in an Internet-like peer-to-peer network spanning wireless, wired and satellite links."

Comments

Re:NBC what????

[HaloZero]

Nuclear
Biological
Chemical

At Oak Ridge National Labs...

[nicodemus05]

in Tennessee, meanwhile, a team of researchers has been working for 18 months on an underlying network architecture for a national sensor network.

I work at the Labs, right down the hall from these guys. I play soccer with a man named Panos Datskos. He recently finished building a cantilever based electronic nose that has the potential to detect a single molecule. Datskos is working on a "universal" sensor that shares many of the same processes of a gas chromatograph to identify any substance. As described in the article, it uses very basic technology (a CD laser). It's also very compact, the size and shape of a discman. The coolest thing about the technology is that it functions in the ambient environment. It does not, like most laboratory equipment, require a vacuum, extreme temperatures, or special shock absorbance to reduce vibration. This is the kind of device that they'll be deploying to airports, I believe.

I make these things - they will work better

[siskbc]

I can see it now: thousands of people fleeing the subway when a sensor trips because someone lit up a cigarette underneath one. Now every ignores it when a real NBC attack comes around, just like the tsunami early warning systems in the pacific.

Two things - first, a decent sensor device made to detect specific things (like sarin, soman, etc, which are all chemically similar) won't be tripping on a cigarette. Pattern won't match.

Second, that's the advantage of having a network - in addition to spacial information, you get redundancy. If there are a few sensors in the area, they can back each other up.

Sensor networks like these are getting better all the time. Unfortunately, too often the scientists/engineers making them spend too much time creating the device and not enough time on the back-end signal processing that provides error correction and greater accuracy, not to mention false-positive protection.

Put it this way - if I made a sensor network, it would not confuse a cigarette for a threat. And hopefully, the people making this one work similarly.

Also, I was interested by something in the article:

The goal for all the government efforts, perhaps three to five years out, is to deploy a highly accurate yet low-cost network of sensors "that in a couple of minutes could tell you if an agent is present, in what concentration and something about the agent. But the technology for that doesn't really exist yet."

Yes it does. We can do it now. :P So it remains to be seen whether what is deployed is really state-of-the-art (or even state of 5 years ago, really).

It was planned for

[greenrd]

For example the US was ready for an invasion by planes missiles etc... but on Sept. 11, the terrorists used something nobody expected.

False.

Sept. 11, 2001 - The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the federal agency that runs many of the nation's spy satellites, schedules an exercise involving a plane crashing into one of the agency's buildings. "On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001," according to a website advertising a homeland security conference in Chicago run by the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute, CIA official John Fulton and his team "were running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the scenario would come true in a dramatic way." Fulton is the head of the NRO's strategic gaming division.

From Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do by From the Wilderness

""We couldn't possibly have known this."
"We didn't know that airlines are subject to this kind of attack."

It's almost one year after the attack on America and we know that these kinds of statements had been a lie.

The CIA and FBI were warned by at least eight secret services and had thirty to forty indices about a possible attack with planes. The FAA had sent out five warnings to the airports about possible hijacks or similar incidents.

On August 6, 2001 the CIA delivered a memo to George Bush about a terrorist attack. On August 23 the FBI released an "urgent cable".

But the most damning evidence that something was known was the enactment of at least eight to ten bio- or regular terrorist exercises during 2000 and 2001.

The last big one took place in June 2001 and another CIA exercise was confirmed for the day of September 11th!

From http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.html

It is beyond dispute now that Bush lied when he said the government had no idea this could happen. They had plenty of idea. This kind of idea had been speculated about for years.