Citation:

STIBER, N. AND A. M. VEGA. GET SMARTE: DECISION TOOLS TO REVITALIZE BROWNFIELDS. Presented at Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, November 13 - 17, 2005.

Impact/Purpose:

to present information

Description:

SMARTe (Sustainable Management Approaches and Revitalization Tools-electronic) is an open-source, web-based, decision-support system for developing and evaluating future use scenarios for potentially contaminated sites (i.e., brownfields). It contains resources and analysis tools for all aspects of the revitalization process, including: planning, environmental risk management, economic viability, and social acceptance. The integration of these tools makes SMARTe a holistic decision analysis system for revitalization that facilitates communication among stakeholders. Using a probabilistic decision analysis framework, SMARTe combines knowledge bases, GIS, analysis tools (e.g., environmental modeling, risk assessment, statistics, economic modeling, and decision analysis), and documentation/presentation capabilities, to provide a truly interactive analysis of revitalization problems. Probabilistic modeling requires specification of probability distributions for each parameter. These distributions capture both what is known about each parameter and its associated uncertainty. Decision making is best supported by a full characterization of uncertainty so that the quality of the final decisions that are made can be measured, the need to collect additional information can be evaluated, and sensitivity analysis can be performed to identify the most important factors in the model. Decisions are nearly always made in the face of uncertainty, and this probabilistic framework allows the uncertainty to be specified, evaluated and managed. The U.S. EPA's Office of Research and Development and Office of Brownfields Cleanup and Revitalization are partnering to develop SMARTe. In this effort, they are collaborating with the Interstate Technology Regulatory Council (ITRC), and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the U.S.-German Bilateral Working Group. The framework for SMARTe is in place (www.smarte.org); but, many analysis tools and other capabilities will not be available until the system is fully functional by the end of 2007.

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