Faster-Than-Real-Time Model for Predicting the Spread of Smoke in Ships

A new generation of Navy ships needs innovations to enable effective damage control with greatly reduced manning. A particular need is software to predict the spread of fire, smoke, radioactive materials, and other toxic agents in real time. Such software could take immediate actions to reduce the initial spread of an incident and would then help damage control personnel obtain situational awareness and work more effectively. Existing software for predicting the spread of fire and hazardous materials are generally ill suited for this task due to insufficient accuracy, the neglect of important phenomena, or excessive runtime. An essential requirement is that the software support the efficient calculation of key model input quantities from sensor data. Creare proposes to develop a software model that is sufficiently accurate, fast, and flexible enough to derive the unknown inputs, while also representing all the phenomena of interest. In Phase I, we will develop a prototype of the model and demonstrate its use for modeling smoke propagation. In Phase II, we will refine the model, develop suitable inverse algorithms to calculate model inputs from sensor data, and coordinate with the Navy and a shipyard to prepare to implement the software in a selected ship.