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Creating an Overall Environmental Quality Index - Technical Report (2000-2005) (Final, 2014)
Citation:
U.S. EPA. Creating an Overall Environmental Quality Index - Technical Report (2000-2005) (Final, 2014). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-14/304, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
A better estimate of overall environmental quality is needed to improve our understanding of the relationship between environmental conditions and human health. An environmental quality index (EQI) was developed for all counties in the U.S. using indicators from the chemical, natural, built and social environment. Included were five environmental domains: air, water, land, built and sociodemographic. The EQI is anticipated to be used in two primary ways: a.) as an indicator of ambient conditions/exposure in environmental health modeling and b.) as a covariate to adjust for ambient conditions in environmental models. However, other uses of the data are expected by different end users such as local, county, state governments, non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), and academic institutions.
Description:
A better estimate of overall environmental quality is needed to improve our understanding of the relationship between environmental conditions and human health. Described in this report is the effort to construct an environmental quality index (EQI) representing multiple domains of the ambient environment, including air, water, land, built and sociodemographic for all counties in the U.S. for the time period including the years 2000-2005.
The EQI was created for two main purposes:
- as an indicator of ambient conditions/exposure in environmental health modeling and
- as a covariate to adjust for ambient conditions in environmental models.
URLs/Downloads:
Creating an Overall Environmental Quality Index - Technical Report (2014) (PDF, 146 pp, 22868 KB, about PDF)EQI Readme 2014 (PDF, 1 pp, 19 KB, about PDF)
EQI Data_all_domains_non-transformed_2013JULY18.csv
EQI Results_2013JULY22.csv
EQI Data_all_domains_2014March11.csv
EQI Data_dictionary_2014Aug18.xlsx
EQI Database2010.mdb
EnvironmentalQualityIndex_2000_2005_Original.xml
EnvironmentalQualityIndex_2000_2005_Original_NonTransformed.xml
EnvironmentalQualityIndex_2000_2005_Original_Transformed.xml
EPA's Environmental Quality Index (EQI) Home page