Citation:

VEGA, A. M., N. M. PORTER, AND N. STIBER. GET SMARTE: DECISION TOOLS TO REVITALIZE COMMUNITIES (MAY 2006). Presented at ORD Science Forum, Washington, DC, May 16 - 18, 2006.

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 to help overcome obstacles for all aspects of the revitalization process, including: land use planning, environmental risk management, economic viability, and social acceptance. Because the system is web-based, members of a community can work remotely and individually to express preferences about future land use and collaborate to write a revitalization plan. The intergration of these tools makes SMARTe a holistic decision analysis system for revitalization that facilitates communication among stakeholders. SMARTe provides advice and insight intended to assist each community to identify the optimal use for a site being revitalized. 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 requries 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.

Record Details: