Impact/Purpose:

Incorporate, improve, and update technology solutions for real-time environmental measurement. Facilitate public access to comprehensive environmental information that is easily understood.

a. Provide effective tools for communicating, interpreting, and applying environmental data and information.

b. Establish partnerships with states and communities to ensure that information is useful and timely for families and communities.

c. Develop a framework that communities can work within, but that will also provide the ability to aggregate information on a local, regional, and national scale.

Specific objectives for HEASD include:

a. The development of technical material that is communicated to the public.

b. The research should be conducted in partnership with a city and/or regional office.

c. A significant research component in each project will attempt to support the NERL's objectives to better define human or ecological health risk through exposure analysis.

d. The resultant product should be the transfer of a simple methodology that can be used to provide basic exposure data/information to the city partner (and the environmental exposure community).

Description:

This project seeks to apply sound science to the collection and presentation of environmental data on Human Exposure to the public so that the public can make informed decisions regarding activities that would affect their exposure to environmental pollutants. The Environmental Monitoring for Public Access and Community Tracking Program (EMPACT) seeks to make real-time environmental quality information available to all Americans. Over the past few years government and private groups have identified the lack of real-time environmental quality information that can rapidly be transmitted to the public and used by responsible parties for more immediate decision making. The President's Reinventing Environmental Regulation Report and the President's right-to-know initiative have provided incentive for EPA to accelerate the development of environmental technologies and implementation strategies that will foster the dissemination of environmental quality information. Advances in monitoring technology over the past few years now allow for real-time data collection and transmission in many areas. Under this program commercially-available environmental monitoring systems will be employed to characterize the environmental contamination in air, water, and soil and provide said information to the public.

Funding for the EMPACT program is completed with the FY01 budget. However, the funded projects will continue until the projects are completed. NERL staff will oversee a grant with NCSU for continued funding of the EMPACT project on the study and development of risk communication and photobiology modeling methods relating to solar radiation exposure assessment.

Record Details:

Record Type:PROJECT

Start Date:10/01/2000

Completion Date:09/01/2002

Record ID: 56149

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Project Information:

Progress :The EMPACT program came to an end in Septmber 2001. All EMPACT projects have been completed except for Subtask 4 which was funded in FY-01 and will continue until August 2004. FY2002 is the official closeout year for the program.
Progress FY00-01
- FY00 Activities: During FY-99 the NERL and HEASD received the funding for an EMPACT research project,"Development of a monitoring protocol for recreational waters and a system for timely access of water quality data for the public" and received additional funding for the expansion of the EMPACT Pilot project in Las Vegas (LV). The project in LV was expanded to include the SunWise program with the addition of realtime ground level UV monitors. John Streicher is PI on a module of this expanded EMPACT pilot project. His module is on High Res Computer Graphics Simulation of real time UV data. FY-00 activities include the continuation of these two projects and the application for additional funding (50K) to continue the existing EMPACT Technical Assistance project "Contra Costa County CA Community Air Toxics Monitoring".
- FY01 Activities: The request for additional funding to continue the existing Technical Assistance project,"Contra Costa County CA Community Air Toxics Monitoring" has been granted. This will enable the project to continue collecting data for another year. The EMPACT project, "Development of a monitoring protocol for recreational waters and a system for timely access of water quality data for the public" will continue with its final report due in FY-2001. NERL/EERD has submitted a proposal, "Communicating Community Awareness of Ecological Conditions in Watersheds Surrounding Ciincinnati- Application of Advanced Technologies", for the FY-2001 internal opportunity for an EMPACT grant. Proposals for the EMPACT FY-2001 internal opportunity are in the process of being peer reviewed. Projects awarded EMPACT funding will be announced in early FY-2001.

Progress by subtask
Subtask 1 - Technical assistance to Contra Costa CA Community Air Toxics Monitoring has completed all of its planned activities/products for FY-99. This includes:
Report on Equipment Performance/Evaluation with SOP: May 1999
Delivery and setup of Equipment in Contra Costa County Van: August 1999
Preliminary Report (with Software) on Air Modeling and GIS System: June 1999

Final Report (with Software) on Air Modeling and GIS System: September 1999

This task received additional funding in FY-2000 to continue its Air Toxics project in Contra Costa County.

Subtask 2 - "Development of a monitoring protocol for recreational waters and a system for timely access of water quality data for the public"

- Comprehensive sampling study is being conducted in FY-2000 bathing season at 5 EMPACT sites (Boston; Baltimore; Detroit; Gary, Indianna; San Diego, CA). Data collected from this study will be analyzed and reported on in FY-2001.

- Additional information is found in OMIS under the NERL/MCEARD.

Subtask 3 - EMPACT Pilot Project in Las Vegas. Information on this study can be found in OMIS under NERL/ESD (task# 5125).

Subtask 4 - The EMPACT program has awarded a Cooperative Agreement (R82943201) to NCSU in the amount of $100,000 for the period commencing September 2001 to August 2004 (3 years) for the study and development of risk communication and photobiology modeling methods relating to solar radiation exposure assessment. This Coop seeks to develop high precision exposure modeling methods using a 3-dimentional graphical analysis approach. With respect to human exposure, anatomical resolution of exposure and dose for arbitrary sunlight illumination scenarios will be tabulated using graphical monitoring "patches" located at various locations on the surface of a model of the human form. Real-time measurements of solar flux will be disseminated on an internet web site, with modeling extensionsrelating a

Relevance :The EMPACT provides a framework for the establishment of partnerships between EPA, states, and communities to develop emerging technologies for real-time communication of environmental quality information. EMPACT attempts to stimulate and encourage communities to establish programs that would benefit the public by providing access to environmental information.

Clients :Public, EMPACT program,

Project IDs:

ID Code :3929

Project type :OMIS