SBIR Phase I: INNOVATIVE RADIATION AWARENESS FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT AND FIRST RESPONDERS

该项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力包括通过负担得起的连续广域辐射监测(RM)保护市政一级的急救人员和当地社区免受辐射危害。辐射威胁的范围从放射性弥散装置和被盗或下落不明的特殊核材料造成的极端高后果-罕见事件，到建筑、电力、医药和工业的放射源引发的更常见和常规的辐射事件。不管威胁是什么，目前的放射设备和培训都是不够的，急救人员装备不足，无法处理发生在城市环境中的辐射事故。由于技术和培训成本，全面的辐射监测系统只能被最大和最富有的城市采用，使大多数市政当局和当地的急救人员得不到保护。该项目将开发一种易于部署、对光谱异常和辐射水平发出警报的RM系统，不需要对一线操作员进行专门培训，而且比现有系统成本效益高得多。无论大小或密度如何，此RM系统都可以部署在各种复杂的环境中。最终结果是准确、实时地绘制大片地理区域的地图，可用于检测、分析和解释各种环境中的辐射水平。这一小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目提供了建立伽马辐射时空光谱数据库的创新方法，以监测大城市地区的变化检测。其概念是通过持续监测来提高一般辐射意识以及源检测能力。而不是试图在光谱观测中识别特定的同位素？哪一项在远距离下是困难的，并且需要高灵敏度的探测器？通过保存过去观测的数据库，有可能检测到光谱形状的时间异常。这提供了检测距离的显著增加，或者类似地，在微弱信号源检测方面。为了成功地将RM系统商业化，需要在两个主要领域进行创新研究：1)通过自举自动校准和集成的连续健康监测实现普遍的多传感器集成，本提案将通过现场部署多个传感器来解决这一问题，以新的传感器到传感器融合方法来表征；2)市政基础设施优化，允许在没有专用调查工具的情况下以分布式方式进行调查，本提案将通过收集数据和为移动传感器部署概念的关键方面构建运营研究优化模型来解决这一问题，回答有关方法的经济可行性的关键问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes protection of municipal-level first responders and local communities from radiological hazards through affordable continuous wide-area radiation monitoring (RM). Radiological threats range from the ultimate high-consequence-rare-event posed by radiological dispersal devices and stolen or unaccounted for special nuclear material to more common and routine radiological events triggered by radiological sources from construction, power, medicine, and industry. Regardless of the threat, current radiological equipment and training is inadequate, and first responders are ill-equipped to deal with radiological incidents that occur in urban environments. Due to technology and training costs, comprehensive radiation surveillance systems can be adopted by only the largest and wealthiest cities, leaving most municipalities and local first responders unprotected. The project will develop an RM system that is easily deployed, alerts to spectral anomalies as well as radiation levels, requires no specialized training for front-line operators, and is vastly more cost effective than existing systems. This RM system can be deployed in a variety of complex environments regardless of size or density. The end result is accurate, real-time mapping of large geographical areas that can be used to detect, analyze, and interpret radiation levels in a variety of environments. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project provides innovative approaches in building a spatial-temporal-spectral database of gamma radiation to monitor change detection over large urban areas. The concept is to improve general radiation awareness as well as source detection capability by having continuous monitoring. Rather than attempting to identify specific isotopes in spectral observations ? which is difficult at long distances and requires highly sensitive detectors ? it is possible to detect temporal anomalies in spectral shape by keeping a database of past observations. This provides for profound increases in detection distance or likewise, in faint source detection. For successful commercialization of the RM system, innovative research is needed in two main areas: 1) universal multi-sensor integration through boot-strapped autocalibration and integrated continuous health monitoring, which this proposal will address via field deployment of multiple sensors to characterize with novel sensor-to-sensor fusion methodologies; and 2) municipal infrastructure optimization that will permit surveys to be conducted in a distributed fashion without dedicated survey vehicles, which this proposal will address by collecting data and building operational research optimization models for key aspects of the mobile sensor deployment concept, answering critical questions on the economic viability of the approach.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.