Report On Department Of Homeland Security Sponsored Research Project At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory On Preparation For An Improvised Nuclear Device Event

Following the events of September 11th, a litany of imaginable horribles was trotted out before an anxious and concerned public. To date, government agencies and academics are still grappling with how to best respond to such catastrophes, and as Senator Lieberman's quote says above, now is the time to plan and prepare for such events. One of the nation's worst fears is that terrorists might detonate an improvised nuclear device (IND) in an American city. With 9/11 serving as the catalyst, the government and many NGOs have invested money into research and development of response capabilities throughout the country. Yet, there is still much to learn about how to best respond to an IND event. My summer 2008 internship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory afforded me the opportunity to look in depth at the preparedness process and the research that has been conducted on this issue. While at the laboratory I was tasked to collect, combine, and process research on how cities and the federal government can best prepare for the horrific prospect of an IND event. Specific projects that I was involved with were meeting reports, research reviews, and a full project report. Working directly with Brooke Buddemeier and his support team at the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center, I was able to witness first hand, preparation for meetings with response planners to inform them of the challenges that an IND event would pose to the affected communities. In addition, I supported the Homeland Security Institute team (HSI), which was looking at IND preparation and preparing a Congressional report. I participated in meetings at which local responders expressed their concerns and contributed valuable information to the response plan. I specialized in the psycho-social aspects of an IND event and served as a technical advisor to some of the research groups. Alongside attending and supporting these meetings, I worked on an independent research project which collected information from across disciplines to outline where the state of knowledge on IND response is. In addition, the report looked at meetings that were held over the summer in various cities. The meetings were attended by both federal responders and local responders. The meetings explored issues regarding IND preparation and how to mitigate the effects of an IND detonation. Looking at the research and current preparation activity the report found that the state of knowledge in responding and communicating is a mixed bag. Some aspects of an IND attack are well understood, some are not, but much is left to synthesize. The effects of an IND would be devastating, yet much can be done to mitigate those effects through education, preparation, and research. A major gap in current knowledge is how to effectively communicate with the public before an attack. Little research on the effectiveness of public education has been done, but it is likely that educating the public about the effects of an IND and how to best protect oneself could save many lives.

The Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S & T) has tasked Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under IA HSHQPN-14-X- 00216 Task 4 "Identification of uncertainty drivers in support of Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Statistically-Based Planning Tool". Task 4 was funded with the support of FEMA's Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNE) Office Improvised Nuclear Device (IND) Branch who has separately tasked LLNL under IA HSFE50-15-X-0283 to develop a planning resource using a new statistically based approach, called the IND City Planner Resource (iCPR). The S & T funded Task 4 represents the foundation effort in developing this new FEMA resource by providing the funding to support the necessary large number of simulations that will provide the technical basis of the iCPR. Currently, FEMA performs IND analyses for one major United States (US) city at a time using one specific hypothetical IND scenario. The detailed analyses of the single scenario are used to support FEMA's Information Analysis phase of the planning process (FEMA Operational Planning Manual, 2014). While well received and highly valued, the detailed city-specific analyses for the single scenario require significant cost and time, and continuing to perform analyses in this manner for numerous cities across the US is not sustainable. FEMA has therefore identified a new approach to develop a software resource that can provide IND effects in a more time and cost efficient manner for a much larger number of communities. This new approach will provide IND related information and effects for IND related Key Planning Factors (KPF) for 60 major US cities, of which 58 are Tier 1 and Tier 2 Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) cities, (Table 1) utilizing a robust, statistically based methodology. Development of the resource leverages past efforts by DHS S & T and FEMA by using the extensive IND analyses that have been completed for 10 major US cities identified in Table 2. However, those are not sufficient to make the correlations needed to develop a robust tool and develop an understanding of correlations between city characteristics (weather, infrastructure, population) and IND effects. Additional analyses need to be performed to determine the uncertainties and response curves to make these correlations. To this end, under Task 4, LLNL performed model simulations and analyses to identify and provide response curves (expressed as two dimensional contours) for radioactive fallout deposition, transport, population, and blast overpressure as a function of yield, weather, location and time. These contours can then be further combined and correlated with infrastructure and population databases to estimate city specific effects on KPFs such as impacted infrastructure and casualty rates.

The world is being transformed physically and politically. Technology is the handmaiden of much of this change. But since the current sweep of global change is transforming the face of warfare, Special Operations Forces (SOF) must adapt to these circumstances. Fortunately, adaptation is in the SOF DNA. This book examines the changes affecting SOF and offers possible solutions to the complexities that are challenging many long-held assumptions. The chapters explore what has changed, what stays the same, and what it all means for U.S. SOF. The authors are a mix of leading experts in technology, business, policy, intelligence, and geopolitics, partnered with experienced special operators who either cowrote the chapters or reviewed them to ensure accuracy and relevance for SOF. Our goal is to provide insights into the changes around us and generate ideas about how SOF can adapt and succeed in the emerging operational environment.

The mission of Department of Homeland Security Bioterrorism Risk Assessment: A Call for Change, the book published in December 2008, is to independently and scientifically review the methodology that led to the 2006 Department of Homeland Security report, Bioterrorism Risk Assessment (BTRA) and provide a foundation for future updates. This book identifies a number of fundamental concerns with the BTRA of 2006, ranging from mathematical and statistical mistakes that have corrupted results, to unnecessarily complicated probability models and models with fidelity far exceeding existing data, to more basic questions about how terrorist behavior should be modeled. Rather than merely criticizing what was done in the BTRA of 2006, this new NRC book consults outside experts and collects a number of proposed alternatives that could improve DHS's ability to assess potential terrorist behavior as a key element of risk-informed decision making, and it explains these alternatives in the specific context of the BTRA and the bioterrorism threat.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a workshop on August 22â€"23, 2018, in Washington, DC, to explore medical and public health preparedness for a nuclear incident. The event brought together experts from government, nongovernmental organizations, academia, and the private sector to explore current assumptions behind the status of medical and public health preparedness for a nuclear incident, examine potential changes in these assumptions in light of increasing concerns about the use of nuclear warfare, and discuss challenges and opportunities for capacity building in the current threat environment. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Although military policy seems focused on overseas threats, defending the homeland is, of course, the ultimate objective. This guide examines emergent threats to the USA homeland such as speciality weapons, cyber attacks and ballistic missiles and delineates the army's responsibilities.