In late 2005, the Department of Homeland Security selected a multi-University consortium led by the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) to form a National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response (PACER). One of PACER's three-year cross-cutting projects is the construction of an initial integrated M&S framework focused on preparing for the response to catastrophic events. This project is led by the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, and involves researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Florida Atlantic University, Florida A&M University, and the Brookings Institution. The first prototype simulation, completed during the winter of 2007-08, was designed to simulate the emergency response to an urban chemical disaster -- the release of chlorine from two explosively ruptured railcars -- and was developed using the IEEE 1516 High Level Architecture standard.
This paper describes the design of the Urban Chemical Disaster simulation; provides the simulation system engineering considerations that led to the structuring of the flow of simulation execution into a set of slower-than-real-time components (some of which were executed using high-performance-computing equipment) followed by the faster-than-real-time federation executed using personal computers; and discusses the results of the simulation federation integration and demonstration. The components discussed include the wind field generation simulation, the chemical transport simulation, and the insertion of chemical concentrations into the federation; a traffic flow simulation (populated with road network, traffic signal, and demographic information); the dynamic mechanical simulation of the railcar explosion/rupture and the resulting chemical release rate simulation; and the sensing and command/control simulations.
Lessons learned in collaboration will be presented that were derived from the geographically dispersed development of the simulation by the multi-university team. Finally, potential application of the simulation to mission rehearsal by emergency response decision-makers will be discussed.