WEST Custom Infrastructure Update
Citation:
Boe, T. WEST Custom Infrastructure Update. Expert Group on Recovery Management (EGRM), RTP, NC, January 07, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation updating the Expert Group on Recovery Management (EGRM) on the WEST custom infrastructure feature.
Description:
Management of waste from biological and radiological incidents is complicated by the fact that decontamination decisions have a profound impact on the characteristics of resulting waste streams. Wide-area biological and radiological incidents could produce massive quantities of waste that may need to be treated on-site and sent for subsequent disposal as non-contaminated materials, or else be directly disposed of as contaminated materials. The EPA has developed the Waste Estimation Support Tool (WEST) for use by emergency managers and planners to characterize and quantify the biological and radiological waste that may be generated from decontamination efforts. WEST combines Geographic Information System (GIS)-based analysis of externally-supplied plume data, infrastructure databases derived from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA’s) HAZUS tool, and satellite imagery surface recognition algorithms to combine the composition and square footage of the buildings in the plume with estimates of the materials between the buildings in the plume. The resulting GIS datafiles are then imported into a Microsoft Access database, where they are combined with information about the nature and concentration of contaminants, and then subjected to decontamination strategies for different contaminated surfaces. The resulting outputs from the tool describe estimates of the types, quantities, and residual contamination in the resulting waste streams. This presentation will present the most recent version of WEST, which includes such considerations as affected biomass (e.g., trees) and vehicles.