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Working with two industry partners, Tenix Corporation and CH2M Hill, Sandia is developing an unattended system that would continuously monitor the water supply for safety and purity. The system will integrate Sandia’s MicroChemLab technology, which rapidly detects and identifies chemical and biological weapons. Our partners hope to make this system commercially available within a few years.
Sandia and other labs have developed and tested a chemical detection system that can be rapidly deployed at special facilities or events to protect against toxic industrial chemical threats. This product has been successfully tested at the San Francisco International Airport and is still under development.
Field tests at northeast ports are confirming the value of Sandia’s SMART radiation detection system, which can detect and identify radiological isotopes within shipping containers. Incorporating Sandia’s proprietary auto-isotope identification software, FitToDB, SMART indicates the probability that a radioactive material detected presents a security concern, while a video camera simultaneously captures an image of the person or vehicle carrying the radioactive material.
Sandia has created a licensing agreement with Thermo Electron Corporation that allows the company to use FitToDB in commercial units. Thermo Electron was awarded a Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) contract in early 2005 to build and test three prototypes of radiological sensors using this Sandia’s software.
During a three-month test conducted by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in 2005, airline passengers at a security checkpoint at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport were screened for faint traces of explosives by the Sentinel, a walk-through portal developed by Sandia and licensed to Smiths Detection.
When passengers step into the Sentinel, puffs of air dislodge particles from their hair, skin, and clothing, and samples are collected and analyzed. If traces of an explosive chemical are found, an alarm alerts inspectors, who then take appropriate action.
Based on successful tests, TSA announced it would purchase 25 Sentinels from Smiths Detection. TSA plans to add more machines by January 2006 to provide fast, accurate explosives detection at the nation’s 40 busiest airports.
The Sentinel is also in use at the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, the world's tallest building.
In addition, the British Airports Authority (BAA) has conducted trials at Heathrow Airport, screening volunteer passengers for explosives.
Mass casualties, economic disruption, and widespread emotional fallout—these and other potentially catastrophic outcomes of a chemical or biological attack at airports make these facilities attractive to terrorists. Knitting together decades of expertise, a Sandia team demonstrated a system of early warning sensors that could alert authorities of a bio-aerosol attack under a program called PROACT.
In keeping with Sandia’s long tradition of providing end-to-end solutions, PROACT examines all elements of the challenge: vulnerability assessment, passive protection, biological and chemical detection architectures, response planning, and simulation exercises.
We’ve also partnered with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to publish guidelines to help airport security officers understand the threat, recognize their vulnerabilities, harden their facilities to prevent and mitigate attacks, and respond to attack consequences. The report is now being distributed to airport security officials by the TSA.
In collaboration with Argonne and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Sandia developed PROTECT, a system to detect chemical attacks in subways. First demonstrated in the Washington D.C. metro, this automated network of chemical sniffers, TV cameras, and computers will provide reliable early warning of chemical attack, as well as intelligent emergency response management. PROTECT has been shown to significantly cut response times—which could translate into thousands of lives saved.
PROTECT is now installed permanently throughout DC Metro, and many other cities have expressed interest in the system, which can be easily modified for different transit agencies.