U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Public safety

First responder preparedness

News and Updates

Projects and Programs

First responders collecting samples of the yeast surrogate material during a field exercise. (Credit: NIST)

Standards to Support Biothreat Detection

Ongoing
Since 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks in 2001, suspicious white powder incidents continue to occur within the US, often requiring Federal law enforcement response. Suspect samples are sent to public health laboratories for confirmatory evaluation, which can take hours to weeks to receive
Photograph of a dog sniffing luggage.

Metrology and Standards for Canine Olfactory Detection of Explosives

Effective and accepted by the public, trained dogs are the most frequently deployed detection systems for identification of explosives threats in mobile applications. In addition to being highly sensitive, dogs can rapidly discriminate the unique profile of an explosive in a presence of a large

Publications

Building Fire Hazard Predictions Using Machine Learning

Author(s)
Eugene Yujun Fu, Wai Cheong Tam, Tianhang Zhang, Xinyan Huang
The lack of information on the fire ground has always been the leading factor in making wrong decisions . Wrong decisions can be made by individual firefighters

Tools and Instruments

Large Aperture Scanner

Large Aperture Scanner

The Large Aperture Scanner (LAS) scans a radar transceiver over a 5 meter by 20 meter aperture. Image reconstruction techniques enable a three-dimensional