BIOSURVEILLANCE
from deliberate man-made release or natural outbreaks, either of which could be exacerbated in a mass gathering event.
The Canada plan Critical to enhancing the Canadian Security Forces requirements for biosurveillance was the conduct of environmental baseline surveys at all Olympic and G8-G20 venues - open-air sites and gathering venues, large sports complexes, and urban and critical infrastructure – to optimise placement of monitoring/detection and sampling equipment. As such, a matrixed monitoring and sampling capability was developed that enabled PHAC to structure sampling and laboratory processes to analyse all venue- collected samples without overwhelming laboratory capacity. The plan needed to be matrixed daily. The
networked detectors, samplers and situational awareness sensors enabled determination of when to collect samples, including routine monitoring, samples of elevated concern, and stat samples indicating emergency conditions requiring immediate attention and analysis. The ability to refine the decision point on
when to sample aided in managing laboratory sample throughput capabilities. Efficiency and timeliness were significantly enhanced by assessing samples collected from all venues providing critical, time-sensitive information to
Samples collected from venues provided critical, time- sensitive data to determine prospective health impacts
determine prospective health impacts - saving countless hours of sampling and processing over previous methods. The implementation of a site-specific
real-time situational awareness system, with attendant subject matter experts onsite to make immediate determinations of conditions and background changes from a distributed geographical network (approx. 120 sq. km.), provided a critical backbone capability that supported PHAC’s Mass Gathering surveillance requirement, and its integration into the overall Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit under RCMP jurisdiction.
Minimal disruption The deployment of the sensor network and monitoring capability had to be designed so as not to be disruptive to the execution of the event, and to the transit of personnel and the public at each location. Unobtrusiveness was essential. This concept of aerosol monitoring operations provided an additional layer of surveillance capability, building upon syndromic surveillance and other mass gathering monitoring strategies which were successfully deployed at both the 2010 Winter Olympics and the G8/G20 Leaders Summit.
Of particular note is that this approach
to bioaerosol surveillance is neither sensor- nor sampler-specific. Rather, it is the implementation of a matrixed concept of operations – an environmental baseline determined by site-specific background studies, coupled with a sensor network tuned to provide staged alarms based on anomalies against background, and experienced subject matter expertise in aerobiology to aid in analysis of sensor data – which together provide key situational awareness information to site security personnel to assist in all aspects of response, analysis, and forensic chain of custody. Bioaerosol surveillance, due to the significant range of biological particles present in all background environments, is significantly more complex than detection and identification of chemical, radiological and nuclear anomalies, and therefore requires a similarly intricate and integrated approach to enhancing situational awareness, and augmenting syndromic surveillance techniques at mass gatherings.
Markus Lemke is Vice President, Business Development, Dycor Technologies
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