Integration of Predicted Atmospheric Contaminant Plumes into ArcView GIS
The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) plays a key role in emergency response scenarios in which there may be a release of atmospheric chemical or radiological contamination at the DOE's Savannah River Site (SRS). Meteorologists at SRNL use a variety of tools to predict the path of the plume and levels of contamination along the path. These predictions are used to guide field teams that take sample measurements for verification. Integration of these predicted plumes as well as field measurements into existing Geographic Information System (GIS) interactive maps provides key additional information for decision makers during an emergency. In addition, having this information in GIS format facilitates sharing the information with other agencies that use GIS. In order to be useful during an emergency, an application for converting predictions or measurements into GIS format must be automated and simple to use. Thus, a key design goal in developing such applications is ease of use. Simple menu selections and intuitive forms with graphical user interfaces are used to accomplish this goal. Applications have been written to convert two different predictive code results into ArcView GIS. Meteorologists at SRNL use the Puff/Plume code, which is tied to real-time wind data, to predict the direction and spread of the atmospheric plume for early assessment. The calculated circular puffs are converted into an ArcView polygon shapefile with attributes for predicted time, dose, and radius of the puff. The meteorologists use the more sophisticated Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model (LPDM) to predict particle dispersion and deposition. The calculational grid is brought into ArcView as a point shapefile and then interpolated to ARC GRID format using Spatial Analyst. This GRID can then be contoured into a line shapefile, which is easily shared with other agencies. The deposition grid is also automatically contoured for values that correspond to FDA Derived Intervention Levels for beef, produce, and dairy products. Decision makers at SRS routinely use these predicted plumes to direct field teams. In the case of a strong release, this information can be used to decide whether to evacuate a particular area. Having this information in GIS format may aid the decision maker because other infrastructure information can be overlaid with geographic reference.
- Research Organization:
- Savannah River Site (SRS), Aiken, SC
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC09-96SR18500
- OSTI ID:
- 881476
- Report Number(s):
- WSRC-MS-2005-00600; TRN: US0603103
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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