Timely multithreat biological, chemical and nuclide detection: a platform, a metric, key results

Terrorism has been called 'war in the 21st century' (Barnett). Metrics are needed to quantify changes in threat state as well as system design trade-offs that weight the time required for accurate identification against the threat detection sensitivity. We present an adaptable agent-detection-platform capable of sensing multiple threat agents (chemical, biological and nuclear) simultaneously in diverse media and a performance model of this detection platform. A performance metric 'Time-To-Identify' (TTI); the time required to identify the presence of a given target analyte is presented. Experimental results that illustrate the new technologies required by this platform are presented. The model and metric predict the detection platform's sensitivity and speed for several CONcepts of OPeration (CONOP): (1) agent detection (chemical, viral or bacterial) in a 1 ml clinical sample, (2) botulinum toxin detection in milk and (3) pathogen detection in airplane cabin air.