By STEVEN PIKE
The range of potential threats makes chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) and hazmat response training a challenging business. However, electronic simulation equipment is making significant advances in effectiveness of exercises.
Historically, CBRN response training has involved trainees carrying real detection instruments, searching for small quantities of simulants and, in the case of training for nuclear hazards, responding to handwritten signs showing the level of radiation present at a given location. These methods have, of course, been useful in training responders to deal with CBRN threats; but compared to the options available today, they are severely limited.
For example, using real detectors in training temporarily takes equipment out of service. Worse still, this poses the risk of the equipment being damaged and decommissioned for a far longer time while it is repaired, recalibrated, or replaced. There are also personal risks to trainees during exercises that involve simulants of hazardous substances, since even small quantities of this material can pose a real health hazard. Also, using handwritten signs as indicators of contamination is of little benefit since it does not allow trainees to develop any understanding of how to handle and use detection instruments or how to interpret the readings the instruments provide. In contrast, the use of simulation equipment has recently provided a much-needed upgrade to CBRN response training and is currently enabling the delivery of a highly efficient, flexible, and cost-effective service.
Today’s state-of-the-art electronic simulation equipment makes response training more lifelike, unpredictable, and stretching. For example, in hazmat training, Argon Electronics’ HAPSIM-P probe replaces the cobra-head probe on Hapsite Smart GC/MS and allows you to “detect” chemicals, which you can place in strategic locations. An advantage of using HAPSIM-P is that a wide range of compounds can be simulated easily without contaminating the Hapsite Smart or without having to use any carrier gas, standard, or nonevaporal getter pump.
 |
| (1) Photo courtesy of Argon Electronics. |
Some highly challenging simulation exercises using state-of-the-art electronic simulation equipment are now taking place in the United Kingdom (UK). In what was understood to be the first UK event of its kind on such a scale, Argon Electronics provided the Lancashire Fire Service with the capability to safely simulate the release of a radiological hazard. The scenario involved the simulated crash of an aircraft following a terrorist hijack and the release of a radioactive material at the site. Firefighters were greeted by the tail section of an aircraft that had crushed a car with passengers inside. Billowing black smoke led to the main body of the aircraft, realistically manned by “injured” volunteers who had previously been “contaminated” with safe simulant materials. Other simulation sources were strategically located in the wreckage. Equipped with Argon simulators in place of the real detectors, personnel were able to realistically carry out their roles without risk of harm or damage to themselves, other participants, their equipment, or the environment.
One of the great strengths of simulators is that they offer tremendous flexibility in planning exercises. Instructors can prepare a scenario where the trainees do not know what they will encounter, which is extremely useful because, in a real-life situation, the firefighters responding to an alert do not always know exactly what they are looking for.
Instructors can now manage the detection instrument training of multiple personnel, selecting the parameters for the activation of simulation instruments using the Argon Electronics PlumeSIM®, a CBRN/hazmat response training simulator that provides enhanced flexibility and ease of use in field exercises and tabletop training for counterterrorism, hazmat, or nuclear incidents.
PlumeSIM® is designed on a Windows platform and allows multiple trainees to be managed and monitored from a computer at a central location. The PlumeSIM® software enables users to plan exercises on a PC or laptop without system hardware, offering a portable simulation system with easy-to-use menus that can be swiftly set up to create a diverse variety of virtual emergency scenarios.
PlumeSIM® enables an instructor to plan a scenario that involves either single or multiple releases of hazardous materials and offers the potential to define a series of release characteristics such as duration, persistence, and deposition for an extensive choice of substances. The instructor setting the training exercise can even define the environmental conditions that would affect the movement and state of the virtual plume during the timespan of the operation.
The challenges are many and various, but CBRN/hazmat response training is improving year by year. With simulation software and a set of detector simulators, a complex training exercise rich with variables can be set up that will challenge the trainees to think and act as they would in a real-life situation.
STEVEN PIKE is the managing director at Argon Electronics (UK) Ltd.
Fire Engineering Archives
