Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP); the Nunn-Lugar-Dominici
Act (Defense Against Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996) established a
project by which the Department of Defence was tasked to help respond to chemi-
cal, biological and nuclear (CBN) incidences in the these urban centres. These data
(together with the National Map Project of the US Geological Survey) provide the
foundation for a national database. Of course, even higher resolution descriptions of
building data exist. In principle, the NUDAPT can incorporate such data if it can be
made available.
The primary data are from an airborne LiDAR system which collects data for
Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and Digital Terrain Model (DTM). Differencing
the DEM and DTM signals provides information regarding the buildings and trees
(see example, Fig. 1.1a). High altitude aircraft and municipal property data provide
information to complement the LiDAR database. Such data and the derived UCPs
(example, Fig. 1.1b) are incorporated in the Houston Prototype.
1.3.2 Relevant Ancillary Data
Data obtained from NUDAPT are expected to improve meteorological fields for air
quality, homeland security, and planning purposes. NUDAPT will also provide a
service which links to other sources of data that we anticipate will be of high util-
ity. Such information will include various activities and land-use data such as roads
and their linkages, and activity data including census data, traffic, industrial outputs,
and land surface characteristics data from which gridded products useful for mod-
els will be derived. In addition, NUDAPT will include gridded population data for
the USA, e.g., day-night populations, indoor-outdoor populations, sensitive popu-
lation groups and population mobility matrix. Such data are being generated for
the prototype at latitude-longitude coordinates with a spatial resolution of 250 m.
Other derived daughter products include model specific urban canopy parameters,
gridded anthropogenic energy inputs and gridded traffic emissions. Selected illus-
trative examples of model outputs and analyses will be also available to demonstrate
a range of applications possible.
1.3.3 NUDAPT Design Concept
NUDAPT will become a two level framework, in the form of a web-enabled
database that provides ready access to the various datasets, both primary or source
data and processed data to users. The first level, primary data, includes the high res-
olution building data. Access to this level will be granted for those interested in cre-
ating new or modified UCP datasets. The second level provides unrestricted access;
users can query the database for relevant data, retrieve data in a form that can be
readily assimilated into models such as MM5, and submit model results for further
analysis. The database is federated, i.e., will act as a repository for multiple, hetero-
geneous datasets that all adhere to a consistent format and metadata specification.
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