Handheld Real Time (RT) Climatic/Environmental Sensor

This proposal will provide immediate decision support data, enabling appropriate and cost effective responses (shut down vs. continue) for training exercises/facilities. Specifically, the DoD requires the ability to “train as we fight and fight as we train”, however training is severely limited by visible emissions compliance in the current regulatory environment. Regulated facilities will have the ability to measure, report, and defend their visible emissions compliance status. Virtual Technology LLC is the prime vendor for the Digital Opacity Camera System II and familiar with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Method 9. Both of these solutions lack critical legal defensibility due to human judgment/interpretation, data latency and traceability, and certified user availability. Re-using its existing knowledge base Virtual Technology LLC (VTLLC) will engineer a means to overcome these limitations in the context of the current regulatory environment. VTLLC will deliver a systems engineering design combining multiple existing technologies, GPS, Surveillance, GIS, Met-e, etc. into a single sensor system. The sensor system will provide real-time decision support to responsible individuals regarding compliance status and probability of violation. The final sensor design will provide a mobile device measuring visible emissions and projecting both source and boundary line opacity values on a localized and networked basis. The design will be predictive in its nature accounting for changing environmental variables with the capability to archive the required compliance data set on demand. The most critical factor in the sensor system design will be the human interface to insure simplicity of operation with no to very low training requirement. The Phase II HHRTCS effort will produce a prototype HHRTCS unit, and continue its testing with regulatory agencies to promote acceptance of the HHRTCS for visible emission opacity measurement under the Clean Air Act and related State Implementation Plans. BENEFIT: The HHRTCS will enable military installations, commercial companies and state and local governments who generate visible emissions to effectively manage these visible emissions to the benefit of the generating agency. Further, the HHRTCS will provide a device that can accurately and effectively measure the opacity of visible emissions and store the environmental and climatic conditions at the time of the opacity measurement. This capability will provide the "most credible evidence" of an opacity event and mitigate expensive litigation driven by the current manual record keeping and human interpretation method. The HHRTCS system engineering design created in Phase I of this SBIR project has been endorsed by multiple stakeholders both within and external to the department of Defense and offers great promises to thousands of entities currently mandated to characterize visible emissions under the Clean Air Act.