WIDE AREA SPECTROMETRIC BIOAEROSOL MONITORING IN CANADA: FROM SINBAHD TO BIOSENSE

Threats associated with bioaerosol weapons have been around for several decades. However, with the recent political developments that changed the image and dynamics of the international order and security, the visibility and importance of these bioaerosol threats have considerably increased. Over the last few years, Defence Research and Development Canada has investigated the spectrometric LIDAR-based standoff bioaerosol detection technique to address this menace. This technique has the advantages of rapidly monitoring the atmosphere over wide areas without physical intrusions and reporting an approaching threat before it reaches sensitive sites. However, it has the disadvantages of providing a quality of information that degrades as a function of range and bioaerosol concentration. In order to determine the importance of these disadvantages, Canada initiated in 1999 the SINBAHD (Standoff Integrated Bioaerosol Active Hyperspectral Detection) project investigating the standoff detection and characterization of threatening biological clouds by Laser-Induced Fluorescence (LIF) and intensified range-gated spectrometric detection techniques. This article reports an overview of the different lessons learned with this program. Finally, the BioSense project, a Technology Demonstration Program aiming at the next generation of wide area standoff bioaerosol sensing, mapping, tracking and classifying systems, is introduced.