Policy Analysis: Rapid Response Vaccine Development for Emerging and Emergent
Infectious Diseases. CATHERINE COLAIANNI (Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708) THOMAS BATES (Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 94550)
Despite billions
of dollars spent in research and development, the U.S. is alarmingly
under-prepared to defend against biological warfare. This is most
notable when considering the availability of biodefense vaccines.
Vaccine production facilities are disappearing, and the production
methodology employed in most cases is slow, expensive and outdated.
Additionally, there is no comprehensive capability or even a strategy
to develop and produce vaccines rapidly as part of an emergency response
to a new or emerging pathogen. To explore the current state of vaccine
production and to consider possible new directions to enhance our
national posture, we undertook a policy analysis starting with an
in-depth review of the historical vaccine development cycle for Bacillus
anthracis,
including the time requirements and government funding. Next, we
made simple projections for a similar path to develop vaccines for
other NIAID Category A Priority pathogens. Finally, options were
explored for new research and development directions (5 to 10 year
timeline) to support a rapid vaccine development process amenable
to emergency use. The long-term solution was assessed to be an end-to-end "pipeline
approach" whereby either synthetic subunit or attenuated vaccines
could be rapidly produced 'on-demand'; however, considerable research
is still required for methods to rapidly identify virulence factors
and antigenic regions.
Uncertainty and Scale Issues in Linking Climate Change to the Watershed Scale:
Ideas in Landscape Classification and Use of NASA Remote-Sensing
Data. KANG CHANG (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, IL, 61820) KAREN L. STEINMAUS (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, 99352)
This paper will
identify various aspects of uncertainty in the water resource management
decision making process in the face of future predicted climate changes.
The focus of many current efforts is to understand global change
at the watershed scale. However, methods for studying the watersheds
are spatially smaller than the current methods of studying the impacts
of climate change (GCMs 400km) yet the former methods are still at
a larger scale than the study of the topographical intricacies that
help to determine streamflow (landscape classification). The drive
to elucidate other potential local environmental reactions stems
from the fundamental and often forgotten truth that, we as living
creatures depend on the services our ecosystems provide to us. Climate
change is anticipated to impact a decidedly significant ecosystem
service: water. There is projected to be an increase in the temperature
of the Pacific Northwest (United States) which could mean increased
winter streamflow and decreased spring streamflow in the Cascade
Mountain Range (containing the Yakima river basin). The future supply
complications are likely to stem from the smaller headwaters of the
Yakima and apply to times of drought or flood. Future demand concerns
will most likely produce constraints for water resource managers,
however, should be considered in the context of the current water
rights systems. The spatial and temporal scales themselves as well
as the issues surrounding them will be discussed then followed by
a listing of the major sources of uncertainty in maintaining adequate
water supply. These include General Circulation Models (GCMs), hydrologic
modeling errors, translating model outputs into assessments and landscape
classification errors. Although GCMs present a large amount of uncertainty,
more focus will be placed on uncertainties in the field of landscape
classification - a contributing decision support science for water
resource management. Moreover, one should note the relevance of these
considerations should not be limited to the Yakima or even the Pacific
Northwest, but issues of scale, uncertainty, transferability (land-use,
climatic, etc.), water demand, and accuracy in remote sensing are
some basics that need to be considered for the proper management
of any watershed. Lastly, the extent to which NASA resources can
be applied to aid data end-users such as water resource managers
will also be discussed.
