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GUIDANCE DOCUMENT ON ENVIRONMENTAL MODELS
Citation:
Impact/Purpose:
Adminstrator Whitman charged the Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling (CREM) to 'provide guidance for the development, assessment, and use of environmental models' and to 'initiate [a collaboration] with the National Academy of Sciences to develop [recommendations] for using environmental and human health models for decision-making.' (Whitman Memo, 7 February 2003.) The CREM intends to issue the Interim EPA Guidance on Environmental Models (for which this is a draft) by next year. This interim guidance will be finalized after EPA has a chance to draw from the NAS recommendations.
Description:
This guidance provides recommendations intended to assist in the development, evaluation and application of high quality environmental models that the Environmental Protection Agency uses to address environmental problems and to support regulatory activities. These guidelines will help improve the quality of environmental models used by EPA while increasing the consistency of modeling techniques used among the Agency's program offices and regions. Toward this purpose, the objectives of this guidance are to: (a) Provide a general definition of environmental models and outline the scope of models encompassed by these guidelines. (b) Provide a framework and specific techniques (including case studies and specific examples in the appendices) to assist model developers and decision-makers determine model quality and acceptability on a scientific basis. (c) Summarize other Agency guidance documents that help model developers and decision-makers ensure model quality. (d) Recommend best practices for establishing model reliability and for incorporating information from environmental models into the decision-making process.