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MULTI-SCALED VULNERABILITY ANALYSES: IMPROVING DECISION-MAKING AT REGIONAL TO LOCAL LEVELS THROUGH PARTNERSHIP
Citation:
Smith, E R., M. O'Connell, M H. Mehaffey, V. Orozco, M. C. Chang, AND C. Curtis. MULTI-SCALED VULNERABILITY ANALYSES: IMPROVING DECISION-MAKING AT REGIONAL TO LOCAL LEVELS THROUGH PARTNERSHIP. Presented at Fourth Office of Environmental Information National Meeting, "Leveraging Information Management for Environmental Results", Miami, FL, November 30-December 2, 2004.
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:
Decision-makers at all scales are faced with setting priorities for both use of limited resources and for risk management. While there are all kinds of monitoring data and models to project conditions at different spatial and temporal scales, synthesized information to establish context and perspective and allow for strategic planning and action is lacking. ORD's Regional Vulnerability Assessment (ReVA) Program has been working over the past 6 years to develop methods to make use of existing data and models such that conditions and vulnerabilities can be projected across geographic regions to identify areas at highest risk from multiple stresses or where opportunities exist to improve broad-scale environmental conditions. ReVA's research results are made available in a customizable, web-based integration and visualization toolkit ReVA's Environmental Decision Toolkit or EDT) that can address a suite of assessment questions. To improve accessibility of this type of information, ReVA has partnered with decision-makers at the regional, state, and local levels with real-life decisions that need to be made.