New Approaches on Prediction of Maximum Individual Exposure from Airborne Hazardous Releases

Abstract

One of the key problems in coping with deliberate or accidental atmospheric releases is the ability to reliably predict the individual exposure during the event. Due to the stochastic nature of turbulence, the instantaneous wind field at the time of the release is practically unknown. Therefore for consequence assessment and countermeasures application, it is more realistic to rely on maximum expected dosage rather than actual one. Recently Bartzis et al. (2007), have inaugurated an approach relating maximum dosage as a function of the exposure time, concentration mean and variance and the turbulence integral time scale. Such approaches broaden the capability of the prediction models such as CFD models to estimate maximum individual exposure at any time interval. In the present work a further insight is given to this methodology and an alternative correlation is proposed based on theoretical considerations. The methodology to utilize such correlation types is further justified.