Comparison of the Relative Performance of Active and Passive Aerosol Collection Methods for Biological Detection

The ability to reliably detect hazardous airborne biological materials is an inherently difficult and important problem for Defence (i.e., force protection), national security (i.e., detection of anthropogenic and natural hazards, evaluation of risks for first responders) and for ecological monitoring (i.e., air pollution). There are a multitude of approaches to the problem of biological detection, all of which differ in sophistication, sensitivity, efficiency, response time, deployment feasibility and cost. A key challenge of providing sound scientific advice on a prototype detection system is the ability to evaluate against these criteria in order to select the optimal solution for the operational requirements. An example of such a study is presented in the current paper. 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 distance (km) 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3