Atmospheric dispersion models and pre-processing of meteorological data for real-time application

RODOS is a real-time and on-line decision support system for assisting emergency response in the case of a nuclear emergency. The system is presently under development within the CEC Radiation Protection Programme as a joint venture between several European institutes. This paper identifies, ranks and selects a series of suitable local scale atmospheric flow and dispersion models for RODOS, covering a variety of release types, terrain types and atmospheric stability conditions. The identification and ranking of suitable models is based on a discussion of principal modelling requirements, scale considerations, model performance and evaluation records, computational needs, user expertise, and type of sources to be modelled. Models suitable for a given accident scenario are chosen from this hierarchy in order to provide the dose assessments via the dispersion module. A forecasting feasibility for estimation of possible dose assessments is proposed by on-line connecting the RODOS system via computer networks to national or international numerical weather forecast centres. Local meteorology is introduced into RODOS via a menu-driven 'Pre-processor for Atmospheric Dispersion' module. The pre-processor provides the flow and dispersion models with on-site wind and atmospheric stability measures.