The threat of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) attack is a fre- quent feature of the modern battlefield. Indeed, many rogue nations and terror groups seek to employ asymmetric warfare and some groups will be attracted by the use of chemical weapons to achieve major impact. As a consequence, rapid detection and early response to a release of a CBRN agent could dramatically reduce the extent of human exposure and minimize the cost of the subsequent clean up. The capability to monitor and track contaminant clouds is therefore a problem of great importance. In this report, we address the problem of detection and tracking of multiple contaminant clouds. We develop a stochastic extension of the Gaussian puff model to characterize evolution of the average atmospheric pollutant concentration. To perform the sequential inference on this difficult problem, we propose a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)-based Particle algorithm. Numerical simulations illustrate the ability of the algorithm to detect and track multiple contaminant clouds.
Source Term Estimation and Plume Tracking