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Operational Environmental Emergency Response

Operational Environmental Emergency Response. Presented by Dov Bensimon & Pierre Bourgouin , Environmental Emergency Response Section, Environment Canada. Canadian Meteorological Centre. National meteorological centre (24/7, 365 days/year).

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Operational Environmental Emergency Response

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  1. Operational Environmental Emergency Response Presented by Dov Bensimon & Pierre Bourgouin, Environmental Emergency Response Section, Environment Canada

  2. Canadian Meteorological Centre • National meteorological centre (24/7, 365 days/year). • Supercomputer infrastructure operation and management. • Operation and management of the national EC telecommunications network (24/7). • Environmental emergency response capability. • Unique operational capability. Provide products and services to NavCanada and other departments like DND, F&O (coast guard), Health Canada, etc. • Internationally designated as a “Regional Specialized Meteorological Centre” for nuclear emergencies (by the World Meteorological Organization). • Internationally designated as a “Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre” (VAAC, by the International Civil Aviation Organization).

  3. Canadian Meteorological Centre 3 Research Divisions: Assimilation, Models, Cloud Physics Development Division: Data assimilation, Numerical Weather Prediction, Weather Elements, Scientific Applications Computer: Supercomputer, Telecommunications, Network, Help Desk Operations: Analyses & Prognostics, Environmental Emergency Response, Air Quality, Implementation et Operational Services, External Clients

  4. From official mandates, CMC-EERS gradually developed a real-time response capability in other areas: Support for short range modelling of transport and Dispersion • Toxic spills / chemical accidents / local emergencies • Support to EC Environmental Protection Service (EPS) REECs • (Regional Environmental Emergency Coordinators) • Support to various provincial, national and international agencies • etc. Support for “natural” dangers: forest fire smoke agriculture (Diamondback moth) long range transport of particulates / dust etc…

  5. Environment Canada’s centre of high-performance computing • Dorval • “EC’s central nervous system” for all informatics functions; • supports all critical applications of EC’s intergovernmental mandate; • unique in Canada, one of the few in the world • 24/7 operations • Wide Area Network supercomputer infrastructure • Weather data collection and • dissemination • Storage Capacity > 10 PB

  6. Only as strong as the weakest link! Multiple redundant sources of electricity Reserve generators Multiple power distribution systems Multiple redundant cooling systems 24/7 security & surveillance of the building Critical national infrastructure must remain available

  7. Computing centre • Built summer 2003 • 12000 ft2 • Electricity • 1 MW of IT equipment • about 750 units • 2 MW of cooling

  8. Environmental Emergency Response Supporting organizations in charge of intervention: • Federal Nuclear Emergency Plan (FNEP – Health Canada) • Canadian authority for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Department of External Affairs and International Trade) • Inter-agency Volcanic Activity Advisory Plan (Natural Resources) • National Anti-terrorism Plan • Natural disasters (flooding, forest fires,freezing rain, hurricanes, etc.: supporting emergency organizations such as public security, other levels of government)

  9. International collaboration • We support the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) by providing weather forecasts that enable the tracking the origin of radioactive substances in the atmosphere. • A monthly exercise is performed with other specialized meteorological centres, or with IAEA, to test response to a nuclear emergency. • These programs are under the aegis of the World Meteorological Organization.

  10. The Canadian Urban Dispersion Modelling (CUDM) System • Environment Canada’s Environmental Emergency Response section (EERS), in collaboration with different partners*, has developed a prototype to model dispersion of CRBN pollutants in urban areas under funding from DRDC’s CRTI. • Complex wind flow around buildings is explicitly modelled. • Extensive tests have been made for several Canadian cities: Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal • For more information contact: Pierre.Bourgouin@ec.gc.ca Acting Chief, EERS Canadian Meteorological Centre (514) 421-4614 *Recherche&Prévision Numérique, Environment Canada. NWP Section, Meteorological Service of Canada, EC. Defence Research and Development Canada, Suffield. Waterloo CFD Engineering Consulting Inc,.J.D. Wilson and Associates, Edmonton, Alberta.

  11. Example of a toxic release: Vancouver Model prototype at the urban scale

  12. CUDM Simulation of the release of an hypothetical CBRN agent from in downtown Montréal. The different colors are associated with particles at different heights.

  13. EER response Magnitude 9 (largest recorded in Japan) 11/ 03 /2011 @ 05:46:23 UTC

  14. EER response

  15. Modelling release of radioactivity at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant • Animation

  16. 2011-03-25 12 UTC 2011-03-26 12 UTC 2011-03-24 12 UTC Example a high-resolution simulation • During prolonged events, automatic runs simulating “what if” release scenarios are set up. • This animation in support of the response to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant shows relative low-level concentrations of Cs-137 in Bq/m3 from 2011-03-23 at 1800 UTC to 2011-03-26 at 1800 UTC.

  17. Environmental Emergency Response

  18. Operational Response (24/7) Phone rings at 24/7 shift Supervisor CMC’s Analysis and Prognosis Section

  19. Specialized dispersion modelling EER Section is contacted (on-call 24/7) for operational response • Coordination with: • Regional SPC (Storm Prediction Centre) i.e. Weather Office • Regional emergency team (REEC) • National team (NEEC)

  20. Modelling Request Form • Those requesting modelling for an incident, are asked to fill out a request form. • All pertinent information is included in this document, which helps us to work more quickly. • It facilitates our objective to respond to requests in 90 minutes or less.

  21. Modelling Request Form • The first part of the form asks for information that is mandatory. • The second part of the form asks for information that is optional, but that helps us produce more accurate simulations.

  22. Operational response process

  23. Modelling of a fire – 30 Jun 2011 • Animation

  24. Inverse modelling

  25. Rapports post-mortem • Nous publions des rapports internes après chaque réponse opérationnelle pour une urgence telles que montrées. • Nous faisons un résumé de l’incident et de la modélisation faite, ainsi que de tirer des conclusions sur comment améliorer la performance pour une prochaine fois, s’il y a lieu.

  26. VAAC Montréal

  27. Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre • Environment Canada, in conjunction with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has designated the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) to be a regional Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre (VAAC). • Volcanic ash poses a significant hazard to aviation, particularly to in-flight aircraft. • Flight through a cloud of volcanic ash can damage the engines, the aircraft body, and electrical systems, leading to a partial or total loss of flight control and communication systems.

  28. Modelling: the concept of a plume of hazardous material Source characteristics: When, where, what, how much, release mechanism, etc. • Transport and dispersion • Atmospheric conditions: • wind, stability, precipitation • Topography • Properties of the material • Interaction, deposition, • resuspension Concentrations, accumulations, threshold values (ERPG, IDLH, AEGL, etc.)

  29. Modelling Error • A numerical weather forecast contains several sources of error: • Errors in the observations that feed the models. • Errors in formalization of physical processes in the atmosphere. • Errors related to the numerical representation of real phenomena. • Incertitude in the initial state of the atmosphere. • Etc. • Even if the meteorological information driving the dispersion models were perfect, there would still be errors in the representation of the dispersion processes. • For dispersion modelling, the biggest source of errors are associated with the definition of source term: substance and amount released, duration, location and height of the release, etc.

  30. Main Operational Model Atmospheric Transport & Dispersion Models (ATDMs) • Simple Trajectory model (backward/forward modes) • 0th Order Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Model (MLDP0) • 1st Order Lagrangian Particle Dispersion Models: • Short range (MLCD) • Short/Medium/Long range (MLDP1) • Urban Lagrangian Stochastic Model (urbanLS) • Inverse Lagrangian Models • Short range (MLCD) • Long range in Global configuration (MLDP0-inverse/MLGI)

  31. Dispersion Model Validation MLDP0 simulation superposed on satellite observation. 15 April, 13:30Z. Good agreement demonstrates the good quality of CMC analyses and of the dispersion model.

  32. Dispersion Model Validation It is important to validate the simulation results against satellite images, in order to estimate a reasonable threshold value for drawing the concentration contours.

  33. Merci!

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