Early Warning Systems for Chemical Weapon Agent Detection

Brief Description: As the Defense Threat Reduction Agency continues to improve the preparedness of the United States Military to respond to CWA attack events against the homeland or their allies, one of the areas of focus is on the technology needed to warn of the presence of chemical weapon agents. The accurate and timely detection of these chemical weapon agents is important for two reasons. On the one hand, unnecessary evacuations are costly and should be minimized. On the other hand, failure to evacuate civilians in the event of an actual CWA attack can have catastrophic results. Given the uncertainty in the distribution of attacks over different types of location, there is a need for whatever technology packages that DTRA invests in to have enough flexibility to be used in an extensive range of contexts. Our project hopes to provide insights on an optimal investment in a portfolio of CWA sensing technology to minimize the expected cost per life saved across all probable attack scenarios.  Read our final report here.