Decision Consequence Model (DCM): Integrating environmental data and analysis into real time decision making
A critical evaluation of the many environmental issues facing EPA Region 3 has established five major priorities: (1) ozone pollution (and its precursors); (2) impacts of acidification (acid deposition and acid mine drainage); (3) eutrophication of the Chesapeake Bay from atmospheric nitrogen deposition; (4) Cities/Urban Environment (ozone, particulate matter (PM), air toxics are some of the air components); and (5) Climate Change. Recognizing the complex nature of the systems controlling these issues, Region III's Air Protection Division (APD) is developing a decision support tool, i.e., the Decision Consequence Model (DCM), that will integrate and automate the analysis of environmental impacts in a manner that allows them to holistically address these regional priorities. Using this tool the authors intend to consider the interdependency of pollutants and their environmental impacts in order to support real-time decision making. The purpose of this paper is to outline the basic concept of the DCM and to present an example set of environmental indicators to illustrate how the DCM will be used to evaluate environmental impacts. The authors will discuss their process of indicator development, and present an example suite of indicators to provide a concrete example of the concepts presented above and, to illustrate the utility of the DCM to simultaneously evaluate multiple effects of a single pollutant. They will discuss the type of indicators chosen for this example as well as the general criteria the DCM indicators must satisfy. The framework that was developed to construct the indicators is discussed and used to calculate the example indicators. The yearly magnitudes of these example indicators are calculated for various multi-year periods to show their behavior over time.
- Research Organization:
- Environmental Protection Agency, Region 3 (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20003304
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-990608-; TRN: IM200003%%139
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Air and Waste 92nd Annual Meeting and Exhibition, St. Louis, MO (US), 06/20/1999--06/24/1999; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating Systems: Windows 3.1, '95, '98 and NT; Macintosh; and UNIX; PBD: 1999; Related Information: In: Air and Waste 92nd annual meeting and exhibition proceedings, [9500] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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