ARGOS DSS
Encyclopedia
ARGOS is a Decision Support System (DSS)
for crisis
and emergency management
for incidents with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN
) releases.
, Brazil
, Canada
, Denmark
, Estonia
, Faroe Islands
, Ireland
, Lithuania
, Montenegro
, New Zealand
, Norway
, Poland
and Sweden
.
The users of ARGOS are national organizations responsible for emergency management
. These users have established the ARGOS Consortium with the objective of maintaining and further evolve ARGOS as a state-of-the-art decision support system for emergency response, as well as a network of expertise.
Organizations from a country can get license-free access to all software in the ARGOS suite, but the country must first become a member of the ARGOS Consortium. Membership of the ARGOS Consortium includes an annual membership fee which is used for the future development and maintenance of ARGOS. The membership fees are set relative to a country's GDP, so that countries with a larger GDP pays more than one with a smaller GDP.
The Consortium arranges an annual meeting where all members have equal opportunities to influence the development of the system. The Consortium discusses experiences with ARGOS and decides which new facilities to develop, which new models to include, among others.
ARGOS improves situation awareness
, facilitates decision support, and information sharing among the emergency response organizations. As a simulation instrument, ARGOS is also valuable for training of response organizations, and for providing information to the public.
The ARGOS system makes intensive use of geographic information system
(GIS) to display data on geographic maps. Colours are used to express the concentration, contamination, time-of-arrival, trajectories, doses or inhalation, and ISO curves can display important threshold levels. The GIS system can display NPP’s – measuring stations and weather conditions like precipitation and wind fields.
For running short range prognoses, ARGOS can download a numerical weather prediction
from the Met-Office in the country. As the main atmospheric dispersion model
, ARGOS includes the RIMPUFF
model from Risø National Laboratory
.
and Prolog Development Center
, in close cooperation with Risø National Laboratory
and the Danish Meteorological Institute
.
The ARGOS Consortium was founded in 2001 by the Danish Emergency Management Agency
, Ireland, Norway and PDC.
Decision support system
A decision support system is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in...
for crisis
Crisis management
Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. The study of crisis management originated with the large scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980's.Shrivastava, P....
and emergency management
Emergency management
Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to ensure the continuance of the...
for incidents with chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN
CBRN
CBRN is an initialism for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear. It is used to refer to situations in which any of these four hazards have presented themselves. The term CBRN is a replacement for the cold war term NBC , which had replaced the term ABC that was used in the fifties...
) releases.
The ARGOS Consortium
The current member countries of the ARGOS Consortium are (March 2010): AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Faroe Islands
Faroe Islands
The Faroe Islands are an island group situated between the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, approximately halfway between Scotland and Iceland. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, along with Denmark proper and Greenland...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
and Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
.
The users of ARGOS are national organizations responsible for emergency management
Emergency management
Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to ensure the continuance of the...
. These users have established the ARGOS Consortium with the objective of maintaining and further evolve ARGOS as a state-of-the-art decision support system for emergency response, as well as a network of expertise.
Organizations from a country can get license-free access to all software in the ARGOS suite, but the country must first become a member of the ARGOS Consortium. Membership of the ARGOS Consortium includes an annual membership fee which is used for the future development and maintenance of ARGOS. The membership fees are set relative to a country's GDP, so that countries with a larger GDP pays more than one with a smaller GDP.
The Consortium arranges an annual meeting where all members have equal opportunities to influence the development of the system. The Consortium discusses experiences with ARGOS and decides which new facilities to develop, which new models to include, among others.
The ARGOS system
In case of incidents with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear releases, ARGOS can be used to get an overview of the situation, create a prognosis of how the situation will evolve, and calculate the consequences of the incidents. The target is accidents, as well as terrorist initiated events related to CBRN industries, transports of hazardous materials, and others.ARGOS improves situation awareness
Situation awareness
Situation awareness, situational awareness, or SA, is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time...
, facilitates decision support, and information sharing among the emergency response organizations. As a simulation instrument, ARGOS is also valuable for training of response organizations, and for providing information to the public.
The ARGOS system makes intensive use of geographic information system
Geographic Information System
A geographic information system, geographical information science, or geospatial information studies is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data...
(GIS) to display data on geographic maps. Colours are used to express the concentration, contamination, time-of-arrival, trajectories, doses or inhalation, and ISO curves can display important threshold levels. The GIS system can display NPP’s – measuring stations and weather conditions like precipitation and wind fields.
For running short range prognoses, ARGOS can download a numerical weather prediction
Numerical weather prediction
Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. Though first attempted in the 1920s, it was not until the advent of computer simulation in the 1950s that numerical weather predictions produced realistic...
from the Met-Office in the country. As the main atmospheric dispersion model
Atmospheric dispersion modeling
Atmospheric dispersion modeling is the mathematical simulation of how air pollutants disperse in the ambient atmosphere. It is performed with computer programs that solve the mathematical equations and algorithms which simulate the pollutant dispersion...
, ARGOS includes the RIMPUFF
RIMPUFF
RIMPUFF is a local-scale puff diffusion model developed by Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Denmark. It is an emergency response model to help emergency management organisations deal with chemical, nuclear, biological and radiological releases to the atmosphere.RIMPUFF is in...
model from Risø National Laboratory
Risø National Laboratory
Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy is a scientific research organization north of Roskilde, Denmark. From 1 January 2008 it was made an institute under Technical University of Denmark...
.
ARGOS history
The original development of ARGOS started in 1992 by the Danish Emergency Management AgencyDanish Emergency Management Agency
The Danish Emergency Management Agency is a Danish governmental agency under the Ministry of Defence. Its principal task is to manage an operational part who work out of six Emergency Management Centres, and administrative and legalizing part, who supervises the national and municipal rescue...
and Prolog Development Center
Prolog Development Center
Prolog Development Center A/S is a software company based in Copenhagen.-About Prolog Development Center :PDC was founded in 1984 by Leo Schou-Jensen and Finn Grønskov who are still the business managers and sole owners of the company....
, in close cooperation with Risø National Laboratory
Risø National Laboratory
Risø DTU National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy is a scientific research organization north of Roskilde, Denmark. From 1 January 2008 it was made an institute under Technical University of Denmark...
and the Danish Meteorological Institute
Danish Meteorological Institute
The Danish Meteorological Institute is the official Danish meteorological institute, administrated by the Ministry of Transport and Energy. The institute makes weather forecasts and observations for Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands....
.
The ARGOS Consortium was founded in 2001 by the Danish Emergency Management Agency
Danish Emergency Management Agency
The Danish Emergency Management Agency is a Danish governmental agency under the Ministry of Defence. Its principal task is to manage an operational part who work out of six Emergency Management Centres, and administrative and legalizing part, who supervises the national and municipal rescue...
, Ireland, Norway and PDC.