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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Evaluation of the coal and electric utilities model documentation

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:5326356
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is sponsoring a study of methods and procedures for the effective internal management and control of information model development, evaluation, and application in order to improve the quality and credibility of energy information developed and published by the EIA. This first report of the EMAP project is concerned with the development of procedures for planning and implementing effective documentation and presents the results of an MIT analysis of policy model documentation and EIA's approach to it. As a means both of facilitating the analysis and of illustrating its application in documentation evaluation, a case study is included of a particular energy model, the ICF Coal and Electric Utilities Model (CEUM). The analysis method, its application and the errors and problems identified in the documentation and implementation of the CEUM are discussed in detail. It is concluded that the documentation guidelines presently used by EIA are just that - guidelines. Applying these guidelines in evaluating the CEUM documentation has demonstrated that the actual scope and extent of successful documentation requires more active analysis and planning. Documentation requirements analysis should be an integral part of the model development planning process reflecting the interests and expectations of the modeler, model sponsor, client and/or users, and must be separately budgeted for both financial and skill requirements. It is recommended that EIA consider implementing such a procedure for all new modeling projects. (LCL)
Research Organization:
Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge (USA). Energy Lab.
DOE Contract Number:
AM01-76EI02295
OSTI ID:
5326356
Report Number(s):
MIT-EL-81-007; ON: DE82010822
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English