City’s ’smells’ could help sniff out chemical terrorist attack

WASHINGTON - A new study has suggested creating a virtual map of a city’s chemical smells to help recognize a chemical terrorist attack.

Researchers at DARPA, who have named the project Chemical Cartography Project, believe that the smallest amount of any chemical leaves behind traces that tools like sorpulent tubes could detect.

A map of what different parts of a city are supposed to smell like would indicate when a chemical balance of some area had been altered in a way that suggested a chemical terrorist attack, reports Discovery News.

According to Wired, the data included on those model maps will include “chemical, meteorological and topographical data” from at least ten “local urban sources,” including “residences, gasoline stations, restaurants and dry cleaning stores that have particular patterns of emissions throughout the day.”

At each station, researchers will take chemical readings over a 48-hour period. The data would be used to predict concentrations for different gases across a whole city.

And stretching those findings across the city will allow Darpa to build their virtual maps. This project is only in the initial phases, as Darpa is still seeking proposals for how researchers might build their models for the maps. (ANI)