- ARGOS DSS
ARGOS is a Decision Support System (DSS) for crisis and
emergency management for incidents withCBRN releases.The ARGOS Consortium
The current member countries of the ARGOS Consortium are (Sep 2008):
Australia ,Brazil ,Canada ,Denmark ,Estonia ,Faroe Islands ,Ireland ,Lithuania ,Montenegro ,Norway ,Poland ,Sweden andTurkey .The users of ARGOS are national organizations responsible for
emergency management . These users have established the ARGOS Consortium with the objective to maintain and further evolve ARGOS as a state-of-the-art decision support system for emergency response as well as a network of expertise.All organizations in a country can get license free access to all the software in the ARGOS suite, but the country must become member of the ARGOS Consortium first. Membership of the ARGOS Consortium includes an annual membership fee which is used for future development and maintenance of ARGOS. The membership fees are set relative to the country's GDP so that larger countries pay more than smaller countries.
The Consortium arranges an annual meeting where all members have equal opportunities to influence the development of the system. The Consortium discusses experiences with ARGOS and decides which new facilities to develop, which new models to include, etc.
The ARGOS system
In case of incidents with Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear releases, ARGOS can be used to get an overview of the situation, create a prognosis of how the situation will evolve and calculate the consequences of the incidents. The target is accidents as well as terrorist initiated events related to CBRN industries, transports of hazardous materials, etc.
ARGOS improves situation awareness, facilitates decision support, and information sharing among the emergency response organizations. As a simulation instrument, ARGOS is also valuable for training of the response organization, and for providing information to the public.
The ARGOS system is making an intensive use of GIS to display data on geographic maps. Colours are used to express the concentration, contamination, time-of-arrival, trajectories, doses or inhalation, etc., and ISO curves can display important threshold levels. The GIS system can display NPP’s; measuring stations and weather conditions like precipitation and wind fields.
For running short range prognoses, ARGOS can download a
Numerical weather prediction from the Met-Office in the country. As the main atmospheric dispersion model, ARGOS includes theRIMPUFF model fromRisø National Laboratory . [Risø National Laboratory ] .ARGOS history
The original development of ARGOS started in 1992 by the
Danish Emergency Management Agency [Danish Emergency Management Agency ] and Prolog Development Center [ [http://www.pdc.dk/argos PDC] ] in close cooperation withRisø National Laboratory andDanish Meteorological Institute .The ARGOS Consortium was founded in 2001 by
Danish Emergency Management Agency , Ireland, Norway and PDC.References
External links
* [http://www.css.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/crti/invest/stories-exemplaires/01_0080ta-eng.asp Canada’s National Nuclear Emergency Plan Strengthened with Customized Software System]
* [http://www.nrpa.no/archive/Internett/Publikasjoner/Straleverninfo/2005/StralevernInfo_7_2005.pdf ARGOS in Norway]
* [http://www.brs.dk/folder/The%20Danish%20Emergency%20Management%20Agency.pdf ARGOS in Denmark]
* [http://www.pdc.dk/argos/Case_stories/Swedish%20Argos%20case.pdf Swedish ARGOS implementation]
* [http://www.pdc.dk/argos/Case_stories/Use%20of%20ARGOS%20in%20Ireland.pdf Use of ARGOS in Ireland]
* [http://www.pdc.dk/argos/ ARGOS Homepage]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.