Proceedings of the Public Security S&T Summer Symposium 2009

CRTI 06-0318TD

Higher Education Cooperative for Hazardous Materials and Equipment Tracking

Project Lead: Royal Canadian Mounted Police – National Services and Research

Federal Partner: Royal Military College of Canada

Industry Partner: Vertére Inventory Management Software

Other Partners: University of Ottawa, Queen’s University, Concordia University

Objectives

Most universities across Canada lack accurate hazardous materials inventories and, where they do exist, the inventories are inconsistent and are not always useful for administrative or regulatory purposes. With the ever-increasing demands of a terrorism environment, more regulations requiring reporting of chemical and hazardous materials are coming into force. Furthermore, there has recently been an increasing requirement for institutions to demonstrate to courts that all aspects of due diligence have been used in managing and handling hazardous materials. The lack of control in obtaining, recording, using, disposing of, and reporting hazardous materials presents a problem because chemicals and other materials found in universities could potentially be used in CBRNE terrorism acts.

The goal of this project is to “Canadianize” a world-leading inventory software product and build a comprehensive database of chemicals located at four selected Canadian universities with varied academic foci, differing levels of research, and different regulatory and reporting requirements.

Relevance

This project will standardize the management of chemical inventories, resulting in wide-reaching benefits to universities, including ease of compliance with regulations, budget control, and firm demonstration of due diligence to occupational health and safety requirements. In the context of CBRNE threats and incidents, university administrators will have immediate and ongoing access to chemical inventories and will be able to identify unusual purchases of regulated chemicals and those substances that could be used as precursors for explosives, drugs, and chemical weapons. The database will also provide first responders access to information that may aid in emergency response and will aid investigators by providing access to key information on the presence and location of materials of interest.

The results of this project will complement the information gathered and the work conducted in CRTI 05-0121RTD: "Evidence-based Risk Assessment of Improvised Chemical and Biological Weapons."

Recent Progress and Results

The project team has made significant progress in the past year focusing on data preparation, continued development of the software, and establishment of the server environment with security firewalls and access controls. The University of Ottawa is the “host” university, which means the database servers and software are located on its campus.

The four university partners spent a great deal of time preparing their chemical inventories for conversion to the new system to ensure the data was accurate. The University of Ottawa was the first to have its chemical inventory converted in the fall of 2008. As of January 2009, the University of Ottawa was able to add new chemicals to the database. Concordia University converted their data in March 2009, followed by Queen’s University and the Royal Military College of Canada in April 2009.

An important aspect of the project is the integration of Canadian regulatory and legislative requirements. Work has begun on the Chemical Weapons Convention, Controlled Goods Program, and Designated Substances (Ontario). Tables containing regulated chemicals have been incorporated into the software. These tables will be used to generate alerts during the ordering and receiving processes, allowing efficient tracking and control of regulated chemicals. Work on these and several other regulations will be ongoing for the length of the project.

The project team decided to adopt the use of the web version of Chemwatch, allowing efficient management of Material Safety Data Sheets information. Chemwatch can be accessed directly through the Vertére software giving users quick access to emergency response, health and safety, and detailed chemical properties information for research purposes. Chemwatch is available in 25 languages.

Work has begun on the French translation of the Vertére User Guide. By the end of the project, the software as well as all documentation will be available in both official languages.

Impact

Developing a comprehensive database of chemicals will allow for rapid identification of precursors and toxic materials that can be used directly or can be incorporated into explosives or improvised chemical weapons or devices.

This project will have significant importance to universities and other agencies that hold large quantities of a variety of hazardous materials and which have relatively unrestricted access. The impacts will include budget, inventory control, security of materials, and due diligence. Training and communication will be established between key individuals in each university and first responder communities to ensure that the needs of both academia and responders can be met.

Additional universities are already showing considerable interest. The project is scheduled for completion in 2012.

Author

Denis Nelson, National Services and Research, RCMP, denis.nelson@rcmp-grc.gc.ca

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