Due to the omnipresent threat that terroristic groups can get in possession of chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances, in the last 10-15 years government and international organizations committed to measures for protection against those hazards. Attacks on public transport using CBRN agents can have catastrophic impact as seen in the Sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Recent developments are showing that 3 risk of terroristic attacks is still present and CBRN substances can be used by terroristic 4 organizations.

The latency and delay in the detection and identification of CBRN substances causes a significant issue for emergency services and security authorities and prevents them from immediate effective actions. Operators and emergency task forces must wait and rely on specialized equipment to arrive to identify and classify CBRN substances. Currently in most cases there is no possibility to detect and measure CBRN agents immediately e.g. to map out the distribution of CBRN substances in the surroundings of a critical situation such as an attack.

The aim of the CBRN-City Sensor Network is to protect people in public spaces from CBRN attacks by immediate, automatic detection and identification of those substances. The target is to design an intelligent network of sensing devices (boxes with different CBRN detection sensors) which will be specified and standardized during the project. The information from CBRN sensor devices will be augmented with further relevant and useful data e.g. status of ventilation systems or current meteorological information. To provide all the information immediately to the necessary authorities, this network will be directly interfaced with the control and information systems of the operators, security authorities or emergency task forces.

To select CBRN sensors used in the sensing devices, a CBRN threat analysis and an experiment regarding gas propagation in a representative public space e.g. subway station will be conducted. In addition to the technical solution approach, threat analysis enables to define and improve operational procedures which will be tested in an exercise as part of the project.

The new findings for emergency task forces elaborated in this project will significantly contribute to rescue people in the event of an emergency with CBRN substances in public spaces. The immediate detection and outline of the situation in the actual surroundings helps task forces directly in the field to take safe and effective measures.

Further aims of the project are to increase the safety of operators, passengers as well as surrounding population by improving procedures to effectively eliminate CBRN hazards and distribute relevant information in an effective way.