In the mid-1990’s, the FEMA HAZUS application had a common development effort with the Defense Threat Reduction that resulted in the creation of the Consequence Assessment Tool (CATS). CATS incorporated the primary atmospheric dispersion model, Hazard Prediction Assessment Capability, for military CBR agents, with the HAZUS data sets on the back end providing the CIP and census data needed to calculate the estimated causality losses due to a WMD event. CATS has not been developed past ArcView 3.2, and is not expected to be continued by DTRA in the present configuration or upgraded to ArcGIS 8.3. A current initiative within DTRA as the follow on replacement for CATS is the Vulnerability Assessment Protection Option. The ability of HAZUS-MH to incorporate third party modules makes the application a primary tool to support Emergency Operations Centers. An example of a prototype HAZUS-MH interface for the Department of Veterans Affairs illustrates the ease by which HAZUS-MH can be modified to support CIP and WMD applications.
