Volatile Organic Compound Odor Signature Modeling

ABSTRACT: In this Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) effort, Aerodyne Research, Inc. (ARI) proposes to develop modeling capabilities to be used with portable sensing platforms for predicting the transport and dispersion of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted by individuals. The intended application of these capabilities is to supplement existing (e.g. visual) data-gathering approaches for individual identification and tracking for purposes of threat monitoring. The proposed effort will involve the refinement of"forward"models (for predicting the spatial and temporal evolution of known VOC emissions) as well as the development of"inverse"modeling capabilities (for inferring a VOC emission source given a finite number of VOC measurements distributed in space and/or time). BENEFIT: The proposed work can ultimately be applied in the field of threat monitoring; the models, algorithms, and software tools developed through this work can be integrated with volatile organic compound (VOC) sensing hardware to form a platform to be used by the United States Department of Defense for identification and tracking, supplementing existing (e.g. visual) approaches. Commercialization opportunities for this work will similarly derive from integration of the proposed inverse modeling capabilities into deployed sensing hardware to form an integrated platform for identification and tracking. Outside of the United States Department of Defense, such a system could find use in a number of non-military applications, with dozens of potential clients including local and state police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and airports.