Biological & Chemical Threat ModelingSTAR and NCAR jointly developed a software framework called the Virtual Threat-Response Emulation and Analysis Testbed (VTHREAT), which emulates the entire process involved in detecting, characterizing, and responding to a CBR attack, in real urban and non-urban settings and for real meteorological situations.
Building & Urban ProtectionSTAR’s focus is to develop and deploy systems that analyze the state of the atmosphere, predict the path of toxic plumes, and provide that information to security personnel in order for them to take actions that will protect the building’s inhabitants.
Climate AnalysisClimate change can have a variety of impacts on National security. The availability of projections of the future changes that will occur in different regions of the world will allow preparations to take place to mitigate the political, environmental, societal, and National security-related consequences.
High Performance ComputingHigh performance computers make the parallel modeling codes of NCAR and STAR possible. NCAR has a rich history of high-performance computing dating back to the 1960s, and STAR has leveraged that experience in designing a multi-node, scalable research cluster with a low-latency myrinet interconnect.
Sensor Data FusionSensor-data fusion is the process wherein CBR-sensor and meteorological observations are combined with output from meteorological and transport-and-diffusion models. This technology, employed by STAR, allows the calculation of the location and other properties of sources of plumes of chemical, biological and radiological material observed in the atmosphere.
Tracking Infectious DiseasesOutbreaks of infectious diseases worldwide can impact U.S. National security through destabilization of other nations. In addition, recent outbreaks of dengue fever and West Nile virus in the U.S. have raised concerns among health officials that globalization and climate change will increase the probability that emerging vector-borne diseases, such as Rift Valley Fever and chikungunya virus, will occur here.
Weather ForecastingIn order to track plumes of hazardous material over moderate to long distances in the atmosphere, it is necessary to use high-resolution forecasts of the winds and other variables. These forecasts are provided by STAR computer models that have computational grids that span areas that are as large as multi-state regions of the country and as small as neighborhoods in a city.