Continuous sampling for high-risk laboratories Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophe
We would be excited to fund efforts to test laboratory monitoring systems that would provide data for biosafety and biosurveillance. The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak happened because a clogged air filter had been removed from the bioweapons laboratory’s exhaust pipe and no one informed the night shift manager. What if, by default, ventilation ducts in high-containment laboratories were monitored to detect escaping pathogens? Establishing a practice of continuous sampling would also support efforts to strengthen the biological weapons convention; it would become easier to verify the convention we had a baseline data signature for benign high-containment work.
Additional note: the OSINT data sources mentioned in the Strengthening the Bioweapons convention project (publication records, job specs, equipment supply chains) are also a form of continuous monitoring, but it seemed useful to carve this out as a separate technical priority.
Add-on: for natural epidemics, there are a number of “event-based surveillance systems” that monitor news, social media, and other sources for weak signals of potential emergencies. WHO, PAHO, and many national governments run such systems, and there are a few private ones (one of which I run).
One could set up such a system focussing exclusively on the regions immediately surrounding high containment labs.
There are only ~60 BSL-4 labs, so you could conceivably monitor each of these regions quite closely without an impossibly large team.
Direct monitoring would be much better, but this might be a useful adjunct.
Continuous sampling for high-risk laboratories
Biorisk and Recovery from Catastrophe
We would be excited to fund efforts to test laboratory monitoring systems that would provide data for biosafety and biosurveillance. The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak happened because a clogged air filter had been removed from the bioweapons laboratory’s exhaust pipe and no one informed the night shift manager. What if, by default, ventilation ducts in high-containment laboratories were monitored to detect escaping pathogens? Establishing a practice of continuous sampling would also support efforts to strengthen the biological weapons convention; it would become easier to verify the convention we had a baseline data signature for benign high-containment work.
Additional note: the OSINT data sources mentioned in the Strengthening the Bioweapons convention project (publication records, job specs, equipment supply chains) are also a form of continuous monitoring, but it seemed useful to carve this out as a separate technical priority.
Add-on: for natural epidemics, there are a number of “event-based surveillance systems” that monitor news, social media, and other sources for weak signals of potential emergencies. WHO, PAHO, and many national governments run such systems, and there are a few private ones (one of which I run).
One could set up such a system focussing exclusively on the regions immediately surrounding high containment labs.
There are only ~60 BSL-4 labs, so you could conceivably monitor each of these regions quite closely without an impossibly large team.
Direct monitoring would be much better, but this might be a useful adjunct.