Gerald Brown, Robert A. Koyak, Javier Salmerón, Zachary Scholz

INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics (2021)

Every day, the Los Angeles County Fire Department uses weather forecasts and automated real-time weather observations, together with field-tested moisture content of soil and vegetation, to decide whether and where to position firefighting equipment and personnel, as well as what equipment to use, for the following day. Anticipating a particularly hazardous “red flag” day, they activate off-duty personnel and reserve equipment and add these to the total augmented, prepositioned force. Analysis of years of detailed daily data can advise these costly decisions. Three models, respectively, predict for each region of the county the probability of a fire start, the area burned by a fire given any particular package of equipment and personnel preassigned to fight it, and which packages to form and send to each position. The conflicting objectives are to minimize the expected number of citizens evacuated and the constrained augmentation cost for personnel and equipment.

Zachary Scholz, Marshall Millett, Matthew Schell

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment (2018)

Surrogate radiation sources are used to test detection equipment and train security personnel in the detection and interdiction of special nuclear material (SNM). Some current surrogate sources do not accurately match SNM energy spectra, including for HEU. In this research, we propose and investigate novel source configurations for higher fidelity surrogate SNM sources using thermal neutron capture reactions that result in prompt gammas. The objective is to create a surrogate source that has a more representative spectrum, low cost, and requires minimal security, special handling, and safety precautions.