Chemical defense, food safety, demilitarization, counter-proliferation, hazardous and non-hazmat transportation—Battelle’s world class expertise and facilities help you assess and characterize any threat.

The Battelle team brings together scientists and knowledge management professionals who either work with chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), or are experienced in threat assessment and characterization. For defense and homeland security clients, we apply analytical chemistry, analysis, design, engineering, and knowledge management skills to identify properties and potential hazards, perform decontamination procedures, characterize existing or potential CWAs, retrieve data from public and government literature, and perform chemical laboratory analyses and studies to support homeland security. For clients in the transportation and infrastructure protection industries, we combine threat assessment with consequence modeling to conduct broader risk assessments, maintaining a consistent bridge between safety and security issues and working to identify synergies between reducing risks from crashes and terrorist threats.

Core competencies in threat assessment and characterization include:

• Comprehensive Expertise in the Biological and Chemical Agent Arena—including an understanding of dissemination, toxicities, persistency, and modes for decontamination of personnel, equipment and facilities.
• Knowledge Management and Sensitive Data Retrieval—from government, academic, and commercial sources
• Hazardous Materials Transportation—threat characterization and assessment through integrated knowledge of terrorist tactics, material properties, and transportation operations.
• Consequence Assessment—modeling likely consequences from varying threats using a range of materials and scenarios.
• Risk Assessment—combining threat assessment with consequence estimation to provide decision makers with a foundation for making improved policy decisions.
• Integrating Safety and Security—addressing safety and security concerns in a consistent framework is a foundation of our work, which enhances decision making in a world where neither aspect can be considered in isolation.
• Training and Outreach—providing classroom training for federal investigators on evaluating security plans and written guidance for industry on assessing their transportation risks and implementing appropriate countermeasures.

• Hazardous Materials Research Center (HMRC)—Battelle owns the largest and most comprehensive contractor-owned/contractor-operated commercial research capabilities available in the United States to work with chemical and biological warfare agents.
• Analytical Chemistry Laboratories (ACL)—Our state-of-the-art facility is dedicated to chemistry and biology laboratories involving projects for various government agencies. The staff in these laboratories performs research and development of highly sensitive methods for analysis of samples to determine the presence of select chemical compounds, forensic analysis, and custom synthesis.
• Battelle Eastern Science and Technology Center (BEST Center)—This facility was designed to safely handle dilute chemical warfare agents and the CDC’s select biological agents. Analytical services include method development, chemical analysis, and trace chemical and biological analysis.
• Forensic Analytical Center, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD—a secure government facility where Battelle scientists working along side government scientists to perform chemical and biological agent studies.
• The Chemical and Biological Defense Information Analysis Center (CBIAC), Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD—operated by Battelle under contract to the Defense Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC). The CBIAC serves as the Department of Defense’s (DoD) centralized source for Chemical and Biological Defense information and technology. CBIAC services are available to DoD and other Federal Government agencies, their approved contractors, and state and local government entities.