Environmental Emergency Response Section Mandate
Natural, accidental or malicious releases of toxic agents in the atmosphere have the potential to adversely affect large portions of the population (especially in urban centers) and to rapidly contaminate extended geographical areas. For that reason, emergency response agencies need to know as much as possible the potential or actual evolution of toxic plumes. Atmospheric dispersion models are used to assess the evolution of hazardous materials in the air and to evaluate potential impacts. Environment Canada’s Environmental Emergency Response Section (EC-EERS) has developed over the past fifteen years a sophisticated operational, real-time atmospheric dispersion suite (ADS). This suite includes the use of real-time meteorological fields from the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models, a Lagrangian atmospheric transport model (ATM) applicable to a wide variety of situations and a series of tools enabling an efficient use and access to the system (graphical interfaces, visualization analysis, product generator, etc.).
The Environmental Emergency Response Section (EERS) offers specialized advice and sophisticated modeling in order to track hazardous material that ends up in the air. These emergencies can range from accidental spills of hazardous materials at chemical plants, to volcanic eruptions or nuclear incidents. The wind plays an important role in trying to track the movement of the material as it travels in the atmosphere, as well as how much of it may fall to the ground. Knowing how hazardous material will move through the air can be critical information for local authorities. This allows them to make appropriate decisions in response to incidents. The modeling and advisory services offered by the EERS are also provided at the national and international levels. For a more detailed explanation of these services, please visit Environment Canada's Environmental Emergency Response Section.
The operational EC-EERS’s ADS does not yet include the treatment of complex wind flows affecting urban environments.
Since 2004, work is ongoing to integrate the urban capabilities into the suite of operational models. A four-years (2004-2008) research and development project entitled An Advanced Emergency Response System for CBRN Hazard Prediction and Assessment for the Urban Environment (CRTI 02-0093RD), and funded by the Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI), was to develop a high-fidelity, time-dependent multi-scale model for the prediction of a CBRN agent's movement and fate in the complex urban environment and beyond. It resulted in a prototype of an operational system called the Canadian Urban Dispersion Model (CUDM). This system aims to identify the hazardous zones more accurately and will improve emergency preparedness and management of CBRN incidents in Canadian cities.
The three-year (2009-2012) project Towards an operational urban modeling system from CBRN emergency response and preparedness (CRTI 07-0196TD), had the goal to transition this urban flow/dispersion modeling system, towards the status of a functional operational system at EC-EERS.
The two-year (2013-2015) project High-fidelity multi-scale atmospheric dispersion modeling of natural, accidental or malicious releases of toxic agents in the atmosphere, funded by the Defence Research and Development Canada Centre for Security Science, aims to integrate of the urban modeling capability into the operational ADS at EC-EERS, and to make further testing in a proving ground context in collaboration with the user community. The final system will significantly increase our capability to model and simulate the mean flow, turbulence and concentration fields in major Canadian cities and will provide us with the key-enabling technology to demonstrate our capability as a primary national 24/7 reach-back and support centre for CBRN pre-event scenario planning, real time emergency response and post-incident assessment in Canada.
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