Citation:

MEHAFFEY, M. H., BETSY R. SMITH, AND P. F. WAGNER. GEOINFORMATION AND REGIONAL VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT (REVA). Presented at PEER Geoinformatics Seminar, Montpellier, FRANCE, November 14 - 16, 2005.

Impact/Purpose:

Provide regional-scale, spatially explicit information on the extent and distribution of both stressors and sensitive resources.

Develop and evaluate techniques to integrate information on exposure and effects so that relative risk can be assessed and management actions can be prioritized.

Predict consequences of potential environmental changes under alternative future scenarios.

Effectively communicate economic and quality of life trade-offs associated with alternative environmental policies.

Develop techniques to prioritize areas for ecological restoration.

Identify information gaps and recommend actions to improve monitoring and focus research.

There are two task objectives that reflect the work done by LCB in support of the ReVA Program objectives:

Provide information management, spatial analysis support, and data and information accessibility for the ReVA Program

Provide program management support, technology transfer, and outreach.

Description:

Since its inception in 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has monitored air, water, land and human health. Currently, EPA's mission is centered on a set five goals: Clean Air, Clean Water, Land Preservation, Healthy Communities, and Stewardship. As part of these goals, and as one of its contributions to GEOSS, the Agency continually collects and utilizes a wide variety of data. There is now widespread recognition within EPA that in order to successfully address the increasingly complex environmental problems we face requires an integrative and innovative approach to analyzing, modeling, and developing these extensive and diverse data sets. Recent advances in fields such as computational methods, visualization, and database interoperability provide practical means to overcome such problems. One program within EPA that has been working to develop such an integrative approach is the Regional Vulnerability (ReVA) Program. The goal of the ReVA program is to develop tools for 1) estimating current and future condition from existing data, 2) integrating data to look at cumulative risks associated with multiple stressors on multiple resources, and 3) improving visualization, communication, data access.

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