Engineering Commons^™

Why A 15 Minute Biological Detection System?, Doug Lewis

Faculty Publications

The biological defense community needs to take a hard look at the requirements and assumptions we use to develop our biological sensors. Today the point sensors currently deployed or in development can offer at best “near real time” detection. This translates into approximately 10-20 minutes from the time an agent passes over the device until an alarm is issued. Why are we working to develop detection hardware which in reality contributes little to no advantage to an operational environment? Should the DOD resist fielding (in the near term) “near real time” detection systems, and instead field slower (but much more …