Toward a New Damage Assessment Architecture; Adapting Nuclear Effects Reporting for Comprehensive Disaster Support

This report describes a new architecture for weapon-effects reporting to provide information to national, state, and local decisionmakers on the effects of man-made and natural disasters-as well as nuclear detonations-in the United States. It identifies the types of decisions to be supported and describes the systems capable of providing decision support. Federal civil departments and agencies, military organizations, and state and local emergency forces contributed information on nuclear effects. This analysis is intended to provide a basis for policy decisions in emergency management and therefore should be of interest to a broad range of civil and military emergency planners. It also serves as an example of the supplemental role that military forces can play in serving the country in civil disaster response, without interfering with military missions