Grantee Research Project Results
1999 Progress Report: A Decision Analysis Framework for Groundwater Remediation
EPA Grant Number: R825825Title: A Decision Analysis Framework for Groundwater Remediation
Investigators: Harvey, Charles F.
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: October 1, 1997 through September 30, 2000
Project Period Covered by this Report: October 1, 1998 through September 30, 1999
Project Amount: $205,000
RFA: Decision-Making and Valuation for Environmental Policy (1997) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Environmental Justice
Objective:
The objective of this research project is to provide a framework for the evaluation of alternative strategies to manage contaminated groundwater. The framework will include models of physical processes and social values so that a policy analyst can relate the information on a contaminated site to a policy choice on remediation for the site. Issues of social values will be modeled such that the policy analyst can perform what-if analyses on the implications of different social values for the evaluation of the alternative strategies.Progress Summary:
Two papers have been completed that describe methods for evaluating environmental decisions. The first paper considers the discount factor that should be used for future outcomes of environmental decision. Cost-benefit studies often analyze proposed projects by the "opportunity-cost criterion," which states that society should not spend resources on a proposed project if the resources could be spent on an investment project that would produce a greater benefit. The opportunity-cost criterion implies that the discount factor used to evaluate the proposed project should equal the ratio of the cost of the resources to the benefit of the investment project. In this paper, we argue in detail that the opportunity cost criterion must be severely modified to evaluate a proposed policy to mitigate future environmental harms that extend over generations and are highly uncertain. The reason is that the hypothetical investment policy provides returns that are highly uncertain and thus add to the uncertainty of the future harms, whereas the mitigation policy reduces the uncertainty of the future harms. If society is risk averse, the policies' opposite effects on uncertainty provide a strong influence in favor of the mitigation policy over the investment policy. The influence is further strengthened by uncertainty (e.g., disagreement among experts) as to the base welfare of future generations.The second paper describes a method for aggregating individual health outcomes. A decision between policies that affect people's health depends on their preferences regarding their own health and on social values regarding overall health. To evaluate a health policy, its effects on individuals' health must be aggregated into a single measure of its overall effect on health. In this paper, we construct a foundation for using people's preference intensities for health outcomes to aggregate measures of their health outcomes into an evaluation of the overall outcome. The foundation depends on a model by C.M. Harvey (Aggregation of individuals' preference intensities into social preference intensity, Social Choice and Welfare, 1999) that is analogous to the model developed by J. Harsanyi (Cardinal welfare, individualistic ethics, and interpersonal comparisons of utility, Journal of Political Economy, 1955) that uses people's preferences among probability distributions to aggregate personal expected utilities into social expected utility. With the foundation based on people's preference intensities, a policy analyst can separate the two value issues that are directly involved?preferences among personal health outcomes and social values for overall health outcomes?from other issues such as beliefs about uncertain health outcomes.
Much of our work during the last year has been directed towards characterizing the site for our case study in Bangladesh. Two graduate students (one Harvard, and one MIT) and one post-doc are in Bangladesh to collect data during the months of March and April. Through a variety of sources (The Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), the British Geological Survey, UNICEF, the Department of Public Health and Engineering, and the Center for Diarrheal Disease) we have put together a database containing arsenic concentrations in the environment and drinking water, the health effects of this arsenic, and the health effects (infections disease) of drinking surface water. This data will be used to construct the framework for evaluating options for dealing with arsenic contaminated groundwater and providing drinking water.
We received funding from the Alliance for Global Sustainability (AGS) to support the field component of our research. This funding enables us to conduct detailed field measurements of the chemical characteristics that control arsenic mobilization and transport. This project also ensures collaboration with health scientists and water treatment experts. To construct a comprehensive decision framework, we must quantify the effects on health outcomes of different strategies, and quantify the efficacy of different treatment options. Through the AGS, our project includes public health researchers from the University of Tokyo and water treatment researchers from ETH in Switzerland.
Future Activities:
During the next 12 months, we will work to construct a framework for evaluating options to manage arsenic contaminated groundwater and provide drinking water in Bangladesh, our case study. We also will continue to develop general methods for choosing among options for managing groundwater, and will continue to focus on the problem of evaluating the tradeoffs of present costs with safe water supply and environmental quality in the future.Journal Articles on this Report : 3 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
Other project views: | All 21 publications | 4 publications in selected types | All 4 journal articles |
---|
Type | Citation | ||
---|---|---|---|
|
Harvey CM. Aggregation of individuals' preference intensities into social preference intensity. Social Choice and Welfare 1999;16(1):65-79. |
R825825 (1999) R825825 (Final) |
Exit |
|
Harvey C, Gorelick SM. Rate-limited mass transfer or macrodispersion: which dominates plume evolution at the Macrodispersion Experiment (MADE) site? Water Resources Research 2000;36(3):637-650. |
R825825 (1999) R825825 (Final) |
Exit |
|
Hollenbeck KJ, Harvey CF, Haggerty R, Werth CJ. A method for estimating distributions of mass transfer rate coefficients with application to purging and batch experiments. Journal of Contaminant Hydrology 1999;37(3-4):367-388. |
R825825 (1999) R825825 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
groundwater hydrology, decision analysis, health effects., RFA, Economic, Social, & Behavioral Science Research Program, Scientific Discipline, Waste, Water, Ecosystem Protection/Environmental Exposure & Risk, POLLUTANTS/TOXICS, Hydrology, Remediation, Ecosystem/Assessment/Indicators, Ecosystem Protection, Arsenic, Ecological Effects - Environmental Exposure & Risk, decision-making, Water Pollutants, Groundwater remediation, Economics & Decision Making, Social Science, Ecological Indicators, deliberative policy, ecosystem valuation, policy analysis, social psychology, organic pollutants, ecological exposure, risk assessment, community involvement, social impact analysis, valuation, decision analysis, decisions analysis, ecological modeling, environmental values, groundwater hydrology models, environmental policy, aquatic ecosystems, public values, human values, social constraints, public policy, mass transfer limitations, ecological models, community values, groundwaterProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.