Contam airflow models of three large buildings: Model descriptions and validation

Airflow and pollutant transport models are useful for several reasons, including protection from or response to biological terrorism. In recent years they have been used for deciding how many biological agent samplers are needed in a given building to detect the release of an agent; to figure out where those samplers should be located; to predict the number of people at risk in the event of a release of a given size and location; to devise response strategies in the event of a release; to determine optimal trade‐offs between sampler characteristics (such as detection limit and response time); and so on. For some of these purposes it is necessary to model a specific building of interest: if you are trying to determine optimal sampling locations, you must have a model of your building and not some different building. But for many purposes generic or "prototypical" building models would suffice. For example, for determining trade‐offs between sampler characteristics, results from one building will carry over other, similar buildings. Prototypical building models are also useful for comparing or testing different algorithms or computational pproaches: different researchers can use the same models, thus allowing direct a comparison of results in a way that is not otherwise possible.