Patent ID: 8102251

Claim:
A method of detecting and monitoring a threat, comprising steps of: monitoring, via one or more sensors, surroundings of the one or more sensors, wherein at least one sensor is a computer-aided trace detection system, the computer-aided trace detection system configured to collect an air sample from the surroundings, concentrate a first chemical of interest from the collected air sample, separate the first chemical of interest from another chemical of interest present in the collected air sample using a gas chromatograph, and identify the first chemical of interest using a mass spectrometer, wherein the monitoring step comprises determining whether at least one of nuclear material or nuclear by-product are present in the surroundings; the sensors, responsive to monitoring, generating information related to the surroundings; transmitting the information related to the surroundings to a logic system; at the logic system, processing the information related to the surroundings according to pre-selected instructions; transmitting the processed information to a network; responsive to the processed information, generating a message for display on a display device; and displaying the generated message on the display device.