From NCT-USA2019

If you are following CBRNe events, then you are probably familiar with the “NCT – A Vision of IB-Consultancy”. If not, you should look up if there is an event in your area and attend.

Why am I bringing this up?

I recently had the honor and pleasure to join a large group of very senior officials from the DOD and the DHS together with experts from Fire Departments and Industries at the NCT-USA event in Washington, DC. There are a few important takeaways from this event.

It is crucial that we all understand and accept that the threat from chemical toxins and the threat from the advancement in biotechnology, genetics, and genomics is real and that we have to do something about it.  Awareness is the first step but that is not enough. The prevailing perception still is, that this is rare and far away – the opposite is true. We have many incidents in cities around the world were toxic substances are released for a variety of reasons. These range from industrial accidents to malicious or even terrorist intent. Getting access to precursors to fabricate lethal concoctions has never been easier than today. Pair that with the step by step instructions on how to construct an explosive device or recipes to mix the right substances together published on the internet and you have a dangerous combination at hand.

Whilst it will always be difficult or even impossible to prevent such events from happening, one thing can be done. Mitigate the effects and find ways to reduce the impact on our population, promote resilience.

We need to get better in making best use of technology that is available already and insert it into the CBRNe world. Traditionally the CBRNe industry concentrated on developing and producing high-grade sensors. They are very sensitive and can detect a huge variety of substances under adverse conditions. They got smaller and lighter, but did they get smarter?

With smart I mean can they reach out to connect to specialists far away from the scene of events. The current clear and present threat is not stopping at city boundaries, is not limited to municipal boundaries or geographical areas. We need to change our approach to counter this development. It is not a “Whole of Government” approach anymore, it has to be a “Whole of Nation” [1] approach. This is Government and Civil institutions together. If we accept this as a viable way to change the way we mitigate the threat then we have to address the obvious challenge, Interoperability. Getting the right information to the right user at the right time in a readable format is not a given with the current disparity of systems and communication systems in use.

The Information Value Chain, Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom, will to lead faster and better decisions and will save lives.

Networking CBRN detection instruments, irrespective of the vendor, to produce a recognized CBRN picture will provide this advantage to the decision makers.

CBRNet® powered by SafeZone is just that. Bruker Detection, Bruhn Newtech, and Cubic Mission Solutions teamed up and created CBRNet®, the next step in adding value to your detection equipment to make better and faster decisions and saving lives.

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[1] LTG (Retired) Reynold N. Hoover@ Joint DOD Civil CBRN Conference Alexandria 2019