Proceedings of the Public Security S&T Summer Symposium 2009

CRTI 06-0317TD-PROBE

Crime Scene Support Tool for Police, Hazardous Materials, and Emergency Medical Services

Project Lead: Royal Canadian Mounted Police – Canadian Bomb Data Centre

Federal Partners: National Research Council – Canadian Police Research Centre, DRDC, Department of National Defence – Director General Nuclear Safety

Industry Partners: AMITA Corporation, Loraday Environmental Products Ltd., International Safety Research Inc

Other Partners: Toronto Police Service – CBRN Team, Carleton University – Human Oriented Technology laboratory

Objective

This project is designed to create awareness around the automated collection of crime scene evidence, information on triage treatment of casualties, and assistance in monitoring scene integrity with an easily portable and integrated crime scene management tool.

PROBE will leverage previous CRTI investments to close critical gaps in crime scene management capability that originated in the absence of automated, standardized, and interoperable tools. In the current environment, as the scene of a CBRNE event evolves into a criminal investigation, information becomes difficult to control and combine into a manageable format.

The project will develop two generations of working prototypes capable of undergoing live field tests and evaluation by a wide-ranging community of CBRNE responders. The objective of the field tests is to develop, communicate, and publish a statement of requirements for a commercialized product.

Relevance

PROBE will provide a previously unavailable integrated crime scene management capability allowing police, hazardous materials (HAZMAT), and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel to communicate and share CBRNE event data and information sources in real time. Responder safety and public information programs will be significantly improved through this automated support tool that will provide a knowledge base and equipment to support rapid determination of the existence or scale of a CBRNE event and mitigate the spread of CBRNE agents. On project close, the first responder user community will be better prepared to investigate CBRNE crime scenes by utilizing the national investigation standards for the handling of CBRNE (or contaminated) forensic and long-term evidence samples.

Recent Progress and Results

Project work continued this reporting period and Phase 2 activities, including Functional Scope Definition, Technical Approach, Architecture, Design and Build, have been completed. A Version 1 Prototype has been delivered to Toronto Police Service for field testing in an exercise with the Toronto Police Service, Toronto Fire Services, Toronto Emergency Medical Services, Explosive Disposal Unit (EDU) CBRN Technicians, and Toronto Police Service 52 Division Priority Response Unit.

The Medical Emergency Treatment for Exposures to Radiation (METER) sub-project within PROBE has been successfully completed, having delivered training and exercises in Halifax, Nova-Scotia; Quebec City, Quebec; Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario; and Vancouver, British Columbia. METER also leaves behind a radiation assessment tool, training course materials for medical responders and receivers, concept of operations for a radiological-nuclear medical response tabletop emergency exercise, and a capability survey. The project is planned for completion in June 2010.

Impact

Current stand-alone commercial and CRTI-developed software tools (Chemical Biological Response Aid [CoBRA], Palm Emergency Action for Chemical–Weapons of Mass Destruction [PEAC-WMD], Rapid Triage Management Workbench [RTMW], Socius, and radio frequency identification) provide various capabilities for managing CBRNE events. The project team will leverage these tools by integrating them into one comprehensive CBRNE crime scene support tool for police, EMS, and HAZMAT personnel.

The fact that PROBE is built on commercially viable products such as RTMW (which is being deployed in South East Asia), Socius (which is being implemented in Canada and Colombia), CoBRA, and PEAC-WMD speaks greatly to the transition that PROBE will make from technology demonstration at the commencement of the project to a future commercial solution. PROBE will also leave behind a significant impact by creating a solution that transcends different disciplines (e.g., fire, paramedic, police) in responding to and following up on CBRNE events.

PROBE project members will leave a prototype product with each field test evaluation team member. The PROBE prototype will be portable and will provide responders with critical CBRNE information sources, standardized evidence management forms, standardized incident reporting forms and procedures, and mass casualty triage management. It will also enable interoperability and data exchange between the various responders to assist crime scene management.

The test and evaluation process will provide relevant and meaningful requirements to guide development of the next generation commercial tool over the near and mid-term future.

Authors:

Donn MacMillan, AMITA Corporation, sdonn.macmillan@amita.com

Ian Summerell, CBRNE Research & Response, Explosives Disposal & Technology Section, RCMP, ian.summerell@cbdc-ccdb.org

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