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保护基层第一反应者和当地社区免受辐射危害。辐射威胁的范围从放射性散布装置和被盗或下落不明的特殊核材料造成的最终严重后果罕见事件，到建筑、电力、医药和工业放射源引发的更常见和例行的辐射事件。无论威胁如何，目前的放射性设备和培训都是不足的，第一反应人员没有足够的装备来处理城市环境中发生的放射性事件。由于技术和培训成本，只有最大和最富裕的城市才能采用全面的辐射监测系统，使大多数市政当局和当地第一反应人员得不到保护。该项目将开发一个易于部署的RM系统，对光谱异常和辐射水平发出警报，不需要对前线操作人员进行专门培训，并且比现有系统更具成本效益。该RM系统可以部署在各种复杂的环境中，无论其规模或密度如何。最终的结果是准确的，实时的大地理区域的地图，可用于检测，分析和解释各种环境中的辐射水平。这一小企业创新研究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探测。其概念是通过持续监测提高一般辐射意识和源探测能力。而不是试图在光谱观测中识别特定的同位素？这在长距离上是困难的，并且需要高度灵敏的探测器？可以通过保存过去观测数据库来检测光谱形状中的时间异常。这提供了检测距离的显著增加，或者同样地，微弱源检测的显著增加。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连续健康监测实现通用多传感器集成，本提案将通过现场部署多个传感器来表征新的传感器到传感器融合方法;以及2）市政基础设施优化，其将允许在没有专用勘测车辆的情况下以分布式方式进行勘测，该提议将通过收集数据和建立用于移动的传感器部署概念的关键方面的操作研究优化模型来解决，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.