Exercise products & support · CBRN / WMD
Sandtable Studio builds the products — and provides the controller-side support — that make CBRN and WMD response exercises technically honest. Defensible source terms, plumes that move the way plumes move, and simulated data your responders' own instruments will actually read.
What we do
Most exercises fail on realism before they fail on execution. Instruments read numbers nobody believes, the plume goes where the scenario writer wanted it to go, and the hotwash argues about the injects instead of the response. We fix that layer.
Physical and digital material players and controllers can pick up and use on day one — built for the scenario, not adapted from someone else's.
Time- and position-indexed data built on the xSIM architecture, so detection instruments and response applications behave normally instead of being spoofed by hand.
Transport, deposition, and dose products generated from the scenario's actual source term and met — and documented well enough to survive the after-action review.
People who have run the control cell, not just written about it. We can design the exercise, staff it, or sit quietly in the back and evaluate it.
The standard
xSIM is a radiological data simulation architecture — a common way to describe, generate, and deliver simulated detection data into the systems responders already use. We build to it rather than around it.
The practical difference shows up in the exercise, not the paperwork. Instruments display values through their normal interface, so nobody is reading numbers off a controller's index card. The same data set drives every play position, so two teams standing in the same place see the same thing. And because the data set is a described artifact rather than a live improvisation, you can replay it, hand it to another jurisdiction, or pull it back out three years later for a refresher drill.
It also means we are not selling you a closed loop. Data we produce is portable to other xSIM-aware tooling, and data you already own is something we can work from. The specification, schema and a browser-based validator are published openly at xsim.codes.
| Scenario | Urban core / improvised nuclear device |
| Source term | Defined, documented, reviewed |
| Met input | Wind field, stability class, terrain |
| Index | Position × time, table-driven |
| Delivery | Instrument-agnostic |
| Play positions | All fed from one data set |
| Reuse | Replayable · archivable · portable |
| Products | Contours, tables, GIS overlays, AAR exhibits |
Illustrative profile. Every data set is built to the exercise's own objectives, hazard, and terrain.
Products
Sold as standalone products or bundled into a full exercise package. Everything is built to be handed off — your staff should be able to run it again next year without us.
Scaled urban, industrial, port, and transportation terrain with cityscape blocks, overlays, and hazard markers sized for tabletop and controller use.
IND, RDD, radiological transportation, industrial chemical release, and biological incident scenarios — situation manual, objectives, and controller notes included.
Sequenced injects tied to the data set and the objectives, with contingency and free-play branches for when the players go somewhere you didn't plan.
Detector-ready simulated data indexed by position and time, QA'd against the source term and delivered for replay.
Concentration, deposition, and dose contours as printed overlays, digital map layers, and AAR-ready exhibits.
Control cell aids, timing boards, evaluation instruments, and player-facing artifacts that keep a large control cell synchronized.
How we work
HSEEP-aligned and deliberately unglamorous. You can bring us in for the whole cycle or for the one phase where you need a specialist.
Objectives first. Hazard, scale, participants, and what the exercise is genuinely supposed to prove — then the scenario that gets you there.
Source term, met, transport, data set, terrain, injects, and materials. Everything traced back to an objective and documented.
Control cell support, data delivery, inject management, and the on-the-day adjustments that keep the play honest without derailing it.
Hotwash, after-action report, and an improvement plan with findings your leadership can fund. Data set archived for the re-drill.
About
Sandtable Studio exists to build one thing well: the technical layer underneath a CBRN exercise. Terrain, source terms, transport, data sets, injects, and the controller material that ties them together.
The studio is led by a Certified Health Physicist with three decades in radiological detection and health physics and more than twenty years supporting federally sponsored radiological emergency response. That is the bench the products are built on — the plume work and the data sets come from people who spend the rest of their time on real detection problems, not from a scenario template.
We work with state and local emergency management, exercise planners and controllers, federal program offices, and prime contractors who need a CBRN specialist on the team.
| Focus | CBRN / WMD exercises & drills |
| Hazards | Rad, nuclear, chemical, biological, explosive |
| Scales | Seminar, tabletop, drill, functional, full-scale |
| Standard | xSIM · HSEEP-aligned |
| Lead | Certified Health Physicist (CHP) |
| Engagement | Whole cycle or single phase |
Contact
Send the hazard, the scale, the date, and the objectives — even rough ones. We will tell you what is realistic, what it takes to build, and whether you actually need us for all of it.