The first TERRIFFIC Public Workshop was hosted by the Fédération Nationale des Sapeurs Pompiers Français (FNSPF), the French Fire Brigade National Federation on 6-7 November 2018. The welcome and opening address was given by Véronique Soubelet, FNSPF’s Technological & Natural Risks Commission moderator.
A total of 30 people attended the Workshop with a mix of CBRN practitioners, experts and consortium partners. The over-arching objective was to discuss practitioners’ needs during the first hours of a Radiological, Nuclear, explosive (RNe) incident and to define the specifications of the TERRIFFIC System, based on a set of pre-defined scenarios.
The meeting was divided up into three interactive working groups which focussed on the following distinct areas of interest to the TERRIFFIC project:
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Working Group 1: Best available technologies and employment concepts or combined use
- Working Group 2: Evaluation criteria for sensors and analysis tools
- Working Group 3: Definition of useful information both on the field and in the Command & Control Unit
The key questions and comments that came out of the Workshop included:
- Regarding operational requirements, how will TERRIFFIC ensure that the deployment of the system is compatible with existing practitioner procedures? Each part of the TERRIFFIC system will be open and interoperable and will (and should) be used independently from other components in their actual first responders’ concept. This will allow TERRIFFIC to optimally use the first 30 min after a RNe incident.
- It was clarified that in the focus of TERRIFFIC is on CBRN with explosive devices (there are other dispersion models for CBRN incidents).
- The primary objective of the workshop is to define priorities and to present the potentials of the TERRIFFIC systems for end-users (less focussing on engineering of systems which will be the focus later on).
- The advantage of TERRIFFIC is that it makes high sensitivity, accurate tools available to detect and identify tiny dosages of radicals. Important considerations shall however be given to the interpretation of the results as the variety of instruments which will be part of the system will provide results that may vary a lot.
A summary report, produced by project partner TL & Associes has been distributed to the attending practitioners and experts, containing details of the workshop discussions and key findings.