3.  **Selection criteria**

Urban Test Beds seek to satisfy several scientific challenges and
multiple, user-defined operational challenges in quantifying and
characterizing the complex airflow in the metropolitan areas. A single
urban test bed will not be sufficient to characterize all urban areas.
As cities are unique in many ways -morphology, topography, climate,
continentality - multiple test beds will be needed to address a variety
of external factors. The size and cost of an test bed are significant,
so choosing locations should be done carefully and purposefully.

The JAG identified three principal criteria that should be considered in
picking potential test beds. These are

National priority

Local ability to support a test bed, and

Uniqueness and/or commonality of the test bed environment

These criteria are not mutually exclusive. However...

In the following we discuss the various factors which comprise these
criteria.

3,1 [National Priority]{.underline}

The [political importance]{.underline} of urban areas attract people,
industry, commerce, and magnify the potential for disruption from WMD or
other terror threats. Seats of national government (Washington, DC area)
and state governments (state capitol cities) are a central focus for
irreplaceable objects of art, history, music, as well as typically
having larger populations, resources, and a diversity of user
communities, user infrastructures, and interests.

The [strategic importance]{.underline} of an urban area varies among
potential sites. These areas may have defense, commercial and civil
components. Such locations are centers of trade, transportation,
defense, where key activities are focused. National and international
trade of real goods --oil, feed grains, coal, agricultural products --
in and out of the nation goes through the principal port cities. Such
cities might be considered "focal points", where many national resources
-- rail, road, freight and cargo shipping come together. Certain ports
also have a large military presence with assets in ships, personnel and
operational support. Such locations also become civil and military
communication centers. Furthermore critical industries

The [economic importance]{.underline} of an urban area may be
represented by world financial centers such as New York City. Although
significant steps to provide redundancy to economic data bases and
records has occurred in the last decade, the

[Population density]{.underline} is a hallmark of urban areas. The
concentration of people develop demands for goods and services and
complex infrastructures which ultimately drive a larger environmental
public sector. Air quality becomes a more acute issue with the extended
population need for transportation, service goods and energy and their
accompanying emissions to the atmosphere. The transport of aerosols and
gases into, within, and out of major urban areas are important aspects
of assessing, achieving and maintaining environmental air quality.

[Federal Agency priorities]{.underline} must also be considered in
selection of an urban test bed. Various Federal or state agencies may be
planning or executing a long term research program for its interests.
Co-location of the program with an UTB should be strongly considered
when significant local atmospheric knowledge is required. Leveraging of
UTB and agency assets enhances the research quality and completeness
makes economic and operational sense. Conversely, the presence of an UTB
will greatly enhance the atmospheric infrastructure for long term or
short term studies.

The development of UTB's is expected to be incremental, thus the
selection is incremental. The JAG envisions that the Executive Board
(See section 4.??) will identify a particular set of attributes which
will be considered for each new test bed; developing a request for
proposals for each new test bed, and publishing them in Commerce
Business Daily. Urban areas meeting these criteria then propose their
plans for hosting and executing the UTB using local funding in addition
to defined Federal infrastructure (research and equipment). For instance
choosing a mid-continental metropolis adjacent to a large body of water
might elicit responses from Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, or Chicago.
The proposals would be competative and subject to peer review.

2.  [Local Ability to Support a Test Bed]{.underline}

Selecting a location for an urban test bed must be a two-way interaction
between the federal agencies and the local interest groups and users.
This is not a top-down decision. A candidate urban area must actively
participate by investment of money, existing infrastructure, and
personnel in the developing, sustaining, and operating the UTB. The
financial commitment is essential to show there are real, responsible
public and private officials committed to success. It will require
start-up funding and sustained funding. Funds may come by various means
-- local tax-based funds, grants from state agencies / government,
industry, even by congressional action.

Private sector support is an essential ingredient of a successful test
bed. The strength and commitment of local support gauges the benefit to
the sponsor as well as to the community as a whole. Local industry can
participate in financial support, providing services, or shared
infrastructure. News media could have a large interest in establishing
and maintaining an UTB.

Academic support of the research and development and transitioning of
the UTB test bed data to user actions is highly desirable for a local.
The research may be supported through National agencies -- NSF, NOAA,
NASA -- through grants to the institutions. Academic resources such as
high performance computing, data base management, may be applied to the
effort. Moreover, the social sciences involved in translating science
and technology to user needs, tools, actions, or comprehension is an
essential attribute of a test bed. The academic community, teaming with
local users is a vital element in a successful test bed.

Strong dedicated community involvement must be present and sustained in
the test bed from management to execution. Financial interests are
mentioned above. However community personnel must be committed. These
personnel include public safety, elected executives (mayors, councils,
county boards & commissioners), local emergency response capabilities,
citizen support, state and federal regional agencies with responsibility
for airborne agents or hazards. In some potential metropolitan areas,
multiple counties, towns, cities, jurisdictions may be involved. Under
the envisioned constructs of a JUTB, all of these entities must come
together to work cooperatively. Each may have a special interest, but
they are all linked by the common thread of data to help assess
atmospheric impacts on multiple interests.

A program of [outreach to the community]{.underline} through news media,
through schools, or through open houses is critical to show the citizens
the benefits derived from the assets of the urban test bed. Successes
and innovations should be demonstrated at public events. Opening the
data and some technical tools to school-age children for science
projects increases visibility. As success begets success, the community
becomes to rely on the innovative products to make personal
environmental decisions, as many rely on local or web-based radar
animations.

Test bed infrastructure elements exist in many urban areas. These
elements may be a part of the national or local air quality networks,
providing surface wind, temperature, moisture, pressure, precipitation
data in support of air quality measurements. Municipal water treatment
plants often maintain a local weather station and provide local data.
Television stations may install / use weather stations in cooperation
with local schools. Local industries operate surface or elevated weather
data networks for their purposes. The Weather Bug © network of surface
meteorological sensors may have a presence in the urban domain. The
local community needs to draw these assets into the UTB data resources.
Several defense installations maintain a meteorological infrastructure
for test and evaluation ( Dugway PG, Aberdeen PG) and for emergency
response (DoE labs, Cape Canaveral)

Experienced personnel within the urban community are essential to a
successful UTB. The UTB is not intended to teach but to build on the
experience of its participants. The lead personnel must be fully
familiar with the procedures of colleagues from other similar agencies
in the area.

3.  [Uniqueness and/or Commonality of the Test Bed
    Environment]{.underline}

Only a limited number of urban areas will become a UTB. As such each UTB
will be unique from multiple viewpoints. Yet there must be some
commonality to enable transfer of knowledge and experience gained in one
UTB with other UTB's and reach out to non-UTB cities and municipalities.
Although unique, a UTB should have a measure of commonality with other
urban areas. As an example, Kansas City is unique but is likely to have
more commonality with St Louis or Omaha than with New Orleans or
Phoenix.

Climate -- continentality, thermal and precipitation regimes --
constitutes a principal concern for siting. A variety of climates must
be included in the mix of UTB's.

Weather variability is tied to climate measures, but some regions
experience a greater range of conditions than others (San Diego versus
Jacksonville).

Terrain complexity poses the most challenging array of factors to
selection of a UTB. The JAG/ATD report identified the variable local
environment (elevation, slopes, land use, buildings, water interfaces)
as being the more difficult for forecasting near urban scales as they
are so variable over short distances. As an example, the complexity of
the land-water interfaces in the Cape Canaveral strongly influences the
timing and location of the sea-breeze and precipitation patterns. Such
complexity is not uncommon in coastal zones from Maine to Florida to
Texas, or along the west coast of the country. Smaller scale variations
are not easily captured. Mountains create very different flow patterns
and wind structures (Warner paper on SLC) but small hills and valleys
create their own micro-climates and circulations. Repeatability of local
circulations in weakly forcing terrains is not well understood. The
morphology of the urban domain in "urban cores" -- dominated by high
rise buildings - varies widely from a 1 km^2^ area of Oklahoma City to
the Manhattan --New York City complex or the Loop in Chicago. Adding
urban core to rapid terrain slopes of San Francisco, provides examples
of other challenges. Terrain complexity also includes a wide spectrum of
energy exchanges due to highly heterogeneous ground surfaces as well as
HVAC sources, construction material, solar heating/cooling, roofing, and
complex wind flows. Selection of a class of UTB's must consider these
factors and make practical judgments as to the priority given to the

Scientific challenges vary among the locations. As the local morphology
becomes more complex, the science challenge increases.

The ability to design and support special field experiments (e.g. tracer
experiments) and studies is crucial to an UTB. Tracer studies - as
campaigns or as routine events - are crucial to the bottom-line measure
of a UTB. They provide the proof of the pudding that the models and the
user aids are effective and provide the basis for uncertainty
estimation. Candidate locations must support releasing passive tracers.

4.  Selection Process

The JAG recommend that the Executive Board (Section 4.xx) establish an
overall research and implementation objective based on above criteria
for an UTB. A formal solicitation to develop the objective would be
published. The solicitation would define the objective of the UTB by
identifying the primary need, the research objectives, the
infrastructure components, and level of effort provided by the
Government. It would also include an estimate of the level of support
required by the responding metropolitan areas. Prior to this
solicitation the UTB Authority would develop a protocol for operation of
a UTB covering the general performance requirements for on site
instrumentation, communications,, data QA/QC, modeling support, etc...

Urban communities would respond to the solicitation addressing their
capabilities in those areas and to the User criteria that the community
will provide in fiscal and/or services in kind.

Selection made on multi-agency peer review of proposals.

The JAG did not attempt to prioritize or recommend a list of potential
urban test bet areas. There are many tangibles and intangibles that need
to be discussed and evaluated. Nevertheless, the JAG unanimously
endorsed selecting the domain of the UrbaNet program in the DC-Baltimore
as having highest priority because of National priority criteria.