Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC) launched its new Integrated Tactical Rapid Assessment of CBRN Environments (I-TRACE) system, a man-portable capability for the monitoring of Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) incidents and the collection and handling of related data.

I-TRACE facilitates decision support and enhances situational awareness and information sharing among emergency response organizations. The system requires no specialist vehicle installation and can be rapidly deployed using existing "blue light" emergency services vehicles. Access to all data and situational awareness is achieved through a web portal which is controlled using role-based authorized access.

"Command and control systems are critical to the successful management and coordination of a CBRN event. I-TRACE brings together key information assets to give users a common operational picture and provide emergency responders with an integrated analysis and response capability to help minimize the effect of CBRN attacks," said Paul Davison, Vice President Defence, Northrop Grumman Information Systems Europe.

The system provides a flexible, multi-layer solution and has a versatile architecture and scalable configuration making it suitable for use in a wide range of situations and environments. I-TRACE can be integrated with third party meteorological, visual and CBRN sensors to provide situational awareness of a CBRN incident to local and remote commanders, and other interested parties at remote locations. In addition, the raw sensor data is available to analysts for specialist analysis using existing analysis software.