ESTCP, in an ongoing partnership with the National Association of Ordnance and Explosive Waste Contractors (NAOC), is sponsoring a series of courses for munitions response contractors and government personnel to learn more about advanced tools for cost-effectively cleaning up munitions-contaminated sites. The focus of these courses is munitions classification using the UX-Analyze tool.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is responsible for thousands of munitions-contaminated sites, covering millions of acres. Common munitions response practices at these sites use simple metal detectors to identify anomalous responses that may represent subsurface munitions. However, these sensors are unable to distinguish the geophysical signatures of nonhazardous metal objects from munitions. On a typical site, 95 to more than 99 percent of the objects excavated are not munitions, and most of the costs of munitions response projects are spent excavating items that are not hazardous.

UX-Analyze, developed with ESTCP support, is a geophysical target analysis, modeling, and classification module within Geosoft’s Oasis montaj software. With this easy-to-use and comprehensive tool, geophysicists can analyze advanced electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensor data and make classification decisions. Targets classified as munitions are excavated and those classified as harmless metal clutter can be left in the ground.

ESTCP has sponsored 12 offerings of the hands-on course, training more than 250 personnel representing 40 firms and government agencies nationwide. The course covers methods to analyze data from the MetalMapper and TEMTADS advanced EMI sensors. Visit Tools and Training > Munitions Response > Classification Applied to Munitions Response for guidance and archived videos of other classification-related courses, as well as to learn about future UX-Analyze training courses as they become available.