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Waste Estimation Support Tool 5.0
Citation:
Hayes, C., P. Lemieux, AND T. Boe. Waste Estimation Support Tool 5.0. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/X-18/300, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
The Waste Estimation Support Tool (WEST) is a decision support tool that uses GIS techniques to identify infrastructure affected by a biological or radiological incident, and figures out how much and what types of waste are generated from decontamination options.
Description:
EPA’s Waste Estimation Support Tool (WEST) is a GIS-based decision support tool for estimating the characteristics, amount, and residual radioactivity of waste generated from remediation and cleanup activities after a radiological incident, including those involving radiological dispersal devices, improvised nuclear devices, and nuclear power plants. WEST also estimates the amount and residual contamination of waste following a wide-area biological incident. WEST has been released to the public and has been used in numerous national level exercises and planning scenarios; however, it continues to be improved and refined to add additional functionality and performance. Since its inception, WEST has undergone a myriad of updates, routinely ensuring compatibility with ESRI’s ArcGIS and FEMA’s Hazus, a tool for estimating potential losses from earthquakes, wind, and flood events. Furthermore, recent enhancements have added reporting and mapping features and multi-state support. Over time, this progress has strained WEST’s Microsoft© Excel based platform. The inherent limitations of Excel have limited the capacity of WEST and narrowed the scope of potential enhancements.