1 A SURVEY OF METEOROLOGICALLY-BASED SYSTEMS FOR AIRBORNE-RELEASED HAZARD EMERGENCIES

release that threatened a city transfer station near a public airport. Following standard emergency response procedures, the situation called for an evacuation of the most endangered region and the setting up of a triage area (Buckley, 2009). Just what constituted the threatened or “hot ” zone and the safer triage zone were, in part, a function of the atmospheric conditions. Over the past several decades, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has been investigating atmospheric effects in an urban environment. During the most recent decade, one of the focuses has been on airflow and stability around small urban building complexes. In the course of the progressively more complex field studies, seven wind tunnel urban building flow features were verified, and three urban diurnal stability cycles were defined (Vaucher, 2009; Vaucher and Bustillos, 2008; Vaucher et al, 2008). The last field study, WSMR 2007 Urban Study (W07US), not only investigated the atmospheric conditions around a small building complex, but included three disaster response drills. The concurrent measurements and simulated emergency drills prompted a Post-W07US survey of available weather-related, decision-making tools needed to provide near-real time information regarding insitu atmospheric conditions during potentially life-threatening situations. This paper briefly describes the emergency type considered in our survey of atmospheric first-responder tools, a typical work scenario for first-responders, a sample of attributes from the contemporary systems surveyed, and som