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WASHINGTON, June 22, 2004. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently awarded Battelle a $20 million, two-year contract to serve as the lead systems integrator for the Demonstration Phase of the Immune Building program.
A leading expert in chemical and biological (CB) defense, Battelle will manage the design, testing and evaluation, implementation and final demonstration of a complete CB building protection system. The Battelle team was also a performer on the previous two phases of the program for DARPA.
"Battelle is pleased to have the opportunity to continue working with DARPA on this landmark program," said Michael Janus, director of building protection at Battelle. "The innovative advancements in building protection resulting from the Immune Building program will be vital to defending Americans in the global war against terrorism."
The DARPA Immune Building program was initiated in 2001 to identify solutions for protecting building occupants, restoring building operations, and collecting forensic evidence in the event of a chemical or biological incident within a building.
It is expected that this program will result in the implementation of the first fully operational building that uses an active protection system to defeat chemical or biological threats. In addition it will provide the technical groundwork required to tailor such protective systems to other Department of Defense and federal buildings worldwide in the coming years.
The Battelle team started work in June on the program which will include modifications of the current test bed at Fort McClellan, Ala., extensive experimentation of the design in the test bed, and refinement to the design as needed. The design will then be transferred and installed in a facility at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., where Battelle will also prepare and train base personnel for the official turnover of the operational Immune Building to the Army.
The final design and installation will be supported by capabilities and findings from the earlier phases of the program. In Phase I, the Battelle team identified a number of possible protective, restorative and forensic approaches and technologies by modeling the impact of chemical and biological threat agents on several building types subject to variations in building characteristics and vulnerabilities.
The team expanded upon these efforts during Phase II of the program by modifying a vacated barracks building at Fort McClellan to produce a state-of-the-art test bed facility and conducting full-scale experimentation in the test bed to assess the feasibility of the possible approaches and technologies.
For the Demonstration Phase, Battelle will be supported by Black & Veatch, Inc., Mechanical Engineering and Construction Corporation, and Clark-Atlanta University. The majority of the work will take place in Aberdeen, Md. and Columbus, Ohio, with the remainder divided among facilities in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.; Aniston, Ala.; Overland Park, Kan.; Baltimore, Md. and Atlanta, Ga.
For more information, see www.battelle.org.
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