Type of Action: OPCW GRANT

Project Account No: L/ICA/ICB/218790/19

Project description.

During the recent decades, an increasing of threats associated to chemical events took place.

For what regards the release of chemical compounds, several episodes have occurred, such as unwanted industrial leakage, intentional use of chemical weapons by non-state actors, that, by materializing a global threat, have conducted to casualties the actors involved, inter alia fire brigades and military first responders. Concerning the equipment provided to these operators, huge progresses have been done in portable detection and identification instruments, now able to employ numerous different working principles and technologies. Nonetheless, especially during the survey phase that occur just after a chemical release, the operators enter in a potentially contaminated area without knowing type and amount of the contamination, running the risk of losses during the reconnaissance.

On the other hand, nowadays we are witnessing a worldwide spread development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), with countless uses in different fields. They have founded fruitful implementation across civil and military ground in aerial photography, express shipping, gathering information during disaster management, thermal sensor drones for search and rescue operations, geographic mapping of inaccessible locations, severe weather forecasting

For these reasons the aim of this project is the development of the integration of sensor and sampling features, miniaturized to be applied to a flying platform in the way to lower the exposure of personnel, civil defence or military personnel, with drastic reduction of casualties and time loss.

The project involves different actors: the International Master Courses in Protection Against CBRNe events (Department of Industrial Engineering and Faculty of Medicine and Surgery) of University of Rome Tor Vergata, that is in charge of the development of platform simulation; the Department of Chemical always of University of Tor Vergata that is in charge of the development of bio-chemical sensors and of monitoring their functioning; the Private Company HPE will perform all the experimental flights with sensor testing in open field.

Link: https://www.opcw.org/sites/default/files/documents/2019/09/ec92dg14%20c24dg12%28e%29.pdf