E-911 Dispatch and R-911 Notification Challenge Scenario

This disaster scenario was designed to show how certain incidents could quickly span multiple jurisdictions. In this case, based on aerial image reconnaissance, a large (yet highly unlikely) quantity of an industrial chemical was released from an industrial site on a day when weather conditions would imperil the city of Berkeley.

As typically used in Berkeley’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), scenario parameters are entered in a Web interface at the National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC), clearly flagged as a test scenario, and run as a three-dimensional dispersal calculation within a detailed real-time calibrated air circulation context (see Web site).

Thanks to the tremendous computing resources at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the use of the Web NARAC takes about 15 minutes from specification of the scenario to display of plume data on the maps and distribution within the EOC of a scenario consequence report.

At first, winds from a northwesterly direction were threatening Berkeley, but shortly after the scenario event, a change in weather caused surface winds to turn around and push the plume in a more northerly direction. Also, circulation over the hills of Point Richmond caused some isolated areas to be impacted by the plume although surrounding areas were unaffected. Among deterministic models, this sort of result would only be possible with three-dimensional dispersal.

The Bay Area Regional Geographic Information Systems Council had compiled more than one million parcels covering nearly all the affected area. The challenges were: With so many jurisdictions impacted by this scenario, to what extent can affected public safety agencies provide blanket notification to 500,000 people in portions of four San Francisco Bay Area counties that the situation was too dangerous for them to leave and to take shelter where they were? How could the regional E-911 system safely respond to calls from stricken people in the gravely affected community of Point Richmond?