Urban Operation Threat Assessment after a Multistage Radiological Dispersive Device Attack

Abstract

The urban environment may be a relevant setting for special military operations. Due to the options offered by urban infrastructure, this environment can be an essential catalyst for the proliferation of local asymmetric actions. These actions are triggered by extremist groups offering resistance to regular troops. Improvised weapons such as radiological dispersive devices (RDD) can be used to provoke even more threatening situations by increasing the risks of operations. This study is directed, via computer simulation using the Hot Spot Health Physics code, to a hypothetical context where a multistage RDD (RDD-M) is triggered in two non-simultaneous phases. This non-linear triggering causes overlapping contamination and impacts the coping strategy and the projections of variations in the size of the potentially affected population. In this study, the primary consideration is the contamination carried out at such a level that the association between human exposure and deterministic effects is feasible. The exposure to high doses of radiation at short distances about the triggering location of the device. The simulated data show that the threats are leveraged, and the environmental variables have a high value when assessing the criticality of the situation and establishing effective countermeasures.