The National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response is a consortium led by The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. One of the projects, the Modeling and Simulation Integration Framework, is focused on preparing for catastrophic events. This project is led by the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Florida Atlantic University, Florida A&M University, and the Brookings Institution. The first prototype, simulating the response to an urban chemical disaster, was reported upon in a technical paper at I/ITSEC 2008. The second prototype simulates the longer term response to a bioterrorism crisis triggered by the surreptitious release of smallpox in a large indoor arena during a concert.

This paper describes the design of the Bioterrorism Crisis Management simulation, and the systems engineering considerations that led to structuring the simulation into a set of components executing in a much-faster-than-real-time High Level Architecture federation, and a set of components that are executed prior to federation execution. The components discussed include simulations of transport of the smallpox agent within the arena's ductwork; 3D airborne transport of the agent throughout the arena during the concert, resulting in infection of many attendees; spread of the disease over several weeks in a major metropolitan area; traffic flow around hospitals due to people seeking treatment and vaccination; risk communication effects; and surge capacity for hospital treatment and vaccination.

The paper provides the results of the initial execution of the simulation that show the spread of the disease over time and the results of the medical response, based on the initial conditions and assumptions. Finally, potential application of the simulation to mission rehearsal by emergency response decision-makers is discussed.