Sampling Designs for Surfaces within Buildings

• Activity Number: 371
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 9, 2006 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics and the Environment
• Author(s): Brett D. Matzke*+ and Brent A. Pulsipher and John Wilson and Richard Gilbert and Lisa Nuffer and Nancy Hassig and John Hathaway
• Companies: Battelle-PNNL and Battelle-PNNL and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Battelle-PNNL
• Keywords: sample design ; terrorist ; software ; visual sample plan ; VSP ; sampling design

Abstract

The threat of a biological, chemical, or radiological terrorist attack is an increasing concern. Sampling will play a key part in estimating the magnitude and extent of contamination during different phases of the cleanup process should such an attack occur within a building. A visual sample plan (VSP) module was developed to provide sampling designs and statistical analysis for walls, floors, ceilings, and other surfaces within a building. This presentation demonstrates the options available for developing and visualizing sampling schemes for multiple surfaces within a room. Floor plans can be imported or drawn in detail. Analytical methods will be demonstrated for different design objectives, including the ability to compare measurements to a threshold for detecting hotspots and determining the extent of contamination when the data distribution is normal or unknown.