EPA 601/K-12/001 I September 2015 I www.epa.gov/research
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Sustainable and
Healthy Communities
STRATEGIC RESEARCH ACTION PLAN
2016-2019
Office of Research and Development
Sustainable and Healthy Communities
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EPA 601/K-12/001
Sustainable and Healthy
Communities
Strategic Research Action Plan 2016 - 2019
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
September 2015
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Table of Contents
List of Acronyms ii
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 2
Environmental Problems and Program Purpose 3
Problem Statement 4
Program Vision 4
Program Design 5
Building on the 2012-2016 Program 7
EPA Partner and Stakeholder Involvement 9
Integration across the Research Programs 10
Research to Support EPA's Strategic Plan 12
Statutory and Policy Context 12
Research Program Objectives 15
Research Topics 17
Topic 1: Decision Support and Innovation 17
Topic 2: Community Well-being: Public Health and Ecosystem Goods and Services 21
Topic 3: Sustainable Approaches for Contaminated Sites and Materials Management 27
Topic 4: Integrated Solutions for Sustainable Communities 30
Anticipated Research Accomplishments and Projected Impacts 32
Conclusions 34
Appendix 1: Summary Table of Anticipated Outputs 35
Appendix 2: Figures (enlarged to show detail) 38
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List of Acronyms
ACE Air, Climate, and Energy
CCAT Community Cumulative Assessment Tool
CERCLA Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act
C-FERST Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screening Tool
CSAS Community Sustainability Analysis System
CSS Chemical Safety for Sustainability
DASEES Decision Analysis for a Sustainable Environment, Economy and Society
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
FEGS Final Ecosystem Goods and Services
GRO Greater Research Opportunities
HHRA Human Health Risk Assessment
HIA Health Impact Assessment
HSRP Homeland Security Research Program
LCA Life-Cycle Assessment
LOD Linked Open Data
NAAQS National Ambient Air Quality Standards
NEPA National Environmental Policy Act
NESCS National Ecosystem Services Classification System
NIEHS National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
NRDA Natural Resource Damage Assessment
ORD Office of Research and Development
OSWER Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response
P3 People, Prosperity & the Planet Program
RCRA Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
RESTORE Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast Act
ROE Report on the Environment
SAM Sustainability Assessment and Management
SARA Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act
SBIR Small Business Innovation Research
SHC Sustainable and Healthy Communities
SSWR Safe and Sustainable Water Resources
STAR Science to Achieve Results (EPA research grants and fellowships)
STEM Scientific, Technical, Engineering and Mathematical
SWAT Soil Water Assessment Tool
SWMM Storm Water Management Model
Tribal-FERST Tribal-Focused Environmental Risk and Sustainability Tool
TMDL Total Maximum Daily Load
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Executive Summary
How do we meet today's needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their needs? And more specifically, how can we take action to protect our shared environmentair,
water, land, and ecosystemsin ways that are economically viable, beneficial to human health and
well-being, and socially just in the long term?
EPA's Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program is working to provide the knowledge,
data, and tools needed to answer those questions. The program is focused on providing information
and tools to EPA program and regional offices and U.S. communities to inform decisions that produce
more sustainable outcomes for the environment, society, and economy.
This Strategic Research Action Plan outlines the Office of Research and Development's role in
achieving EPA's objectives for cleaning up communities, making a visible difference in communities,
and working toward a sustainable future. It was developed with considerable input and support
from partners within EPA program and regional offices, as well as from outside stakeholders such
as community leaders, other federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and colleagues across
the scientific community. It includes research and development to generate and provide access
to environmental science on health, well-being, and the environment, and to place that science
in the context of the critical decisions facing communities. This plan also contains research and
development focused on some of our nation's most pressing issues - contaminated sites, oil spills,
and waste management.
The Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program is designed to develop research and
tools that offer solutions to community-based decision makers, inside and outside EPA. SHC is
committed to providing high quality information in user-friendly formats to help optimize community
decisions across the three dimensions of sustainability - economics, society, and environment. The
four program objectives are:
1. Develop the data, models, and tools to expand community stakeholders' capabilities
to consider the social, economic, and environmental impacts of decision alternatives
on community well-being, and support the next generation of environmental scientists.
2. Develop the causal relationships between human well-being and environmental
conditions and the tools and metrics that allow assessment and tracking of progress.
3. Provide research and technical support for cleaning up communities, ground water, and
oil spills; restoring habitats and revitalizing communities; and advancing sustainable
waste and materials management.
4. Develop a Sustainability Assessment and Management Toolbox to help the Agency
and others build sustainability into day-to-day operations.
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Introduction
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scien-
tists and engineers and their partners are ad-
dressing 21st century environmental challenges
by integrating research on environmental, eco-
nomic, and social factors to provide sustainable
solutions that support the Agency's mission to
protect human health and the environment and
advance the goals and cross-Agency priorities
identified in the FY 2014-2018 EPA Strategic
Plan1.
To assist the Agency in meeting its mission and
priorities, the Office of Research and Develop-
ment's (ORD) Sustainable and Healthy Com-
munities (SHC) research program developed
this Strategic Research Action Plan, 2016-2019
(StRAP).
The SHC StRAP is one of six research plans, one
for each of EPA's national research programs in
ORD. The six research programs are:
Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC)
Air, Climate, and Energy (ACE)
Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS)
Safe and Sustainable Water Resources
(SSWR)
Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA)
Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP)
EPA's six strategic research action plans are de-
signed to guide a comprehensive research port-
folio that delivers the science and engineering
solutions the Agency needs to meet its goals
and objectives, while also cultivating a new par-
adigm for efficient, innovative, and responsive
government and government-sponsored envi-
ronmental and human health research.
The SHC StRAP for 2016-2019 outlines the re-
search approaches designed to achieve the
goals and strategies set forth in EPA's Strategic
Plan. It highlights how the SHC research pro-
gram integrates efforts with other research
programs across ORD, with EPA program and
regional office partners, and external stakehold-
ers to provide a seamless and efficient overall
research portfolio aligned around the central
and unifying concept of sustainability.
'Fiscal Year 2014-2018 EPA Strategic Plan http://www2.
epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-04/documents/epa
strategic plan fvl4-18.pdf
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Environmental
Problems and Program
Purpose
While EPA has made significant progress in
environmental protection in the United States
during the past few decades, many challenges
remain, and some communities are dispropor-
tionately impacted. Every day, communities
face challenges with environmental implica-
tions, such as the following:
Management of municipal and hazardous
waste
Health impacts from environmental
contamination
Increased stormwater runoff and flooding
Loss of green space and ecosystem functions
Increased greenhouse gas emissions
Remediation of contaminated sites
Siting of schools and public facilities
Planning for roads and mass transit
Science to support sustainable decision-making
is needed because the sum total of community-
level decisions has broad implications for
the environment, economy, and society. The
tradeoffs across these dimensions, attendant
in decisions about infrastructure, land
use, and transportation, are often not well
understood. There is often little information
available on the impacts of such decisions on
human health, ecosystems, local economies,
and disproportionate environmental burden.
Further, even when there may be information,
it is not always accessible in a useful format for
communities.
In addition, many communities still struggle with
a legacy of contaminated land. We need better
science to reduce risks from contaminated
sites and ground water, develop less costly
methods for remediation, and advance beyond
remediation to restoration and revitalization of
communities. While we have learned a great
deal about safer management of wastes, we still
need more options for eliminating waste, safer
options for disposal of unavoidable wastes,
methods to recover materials and energy from
waste, and more options for re-use of materials.
The earth provides a vast array of resources
that humans rely on: clean air, clean water,
food, energy and others. While some of these
resources, such as timber or fisheries, have a
clear monetary value, the value of many other
natural resources, such as wetlands, which help
purify water and provide flood control, is harder
to quantify. There are a whole host of resources
like wetlands that provide important goods and
services to people, yet we often don't realize
and thus adequately value the services that
such natural resources provide. Only recently
have scientists begun to better document and
measure these resources - known as ecosystem
goods and services, or nature's benefits. This
information is vital to making decisions that are
sustainable for communities, economies, and
the environment.
The EPA FY 2014-2018 Strategic Plan embraces
"working towards a sustainable future" as a
key cross-cutting strategy. EPA relies on the
National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
(NEPA) definition of sustainability: The national
goal of achieving "conditions under which
humans and nature can exist in productive
harmony and fulfill the social, economic and
other requirements of present and future
generations" (National Environmental Policy
Act of 1969).
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With sufficient knowledge and tools, urban,
suburban and rural communities can develop
in ways that improve the environment, human
health, and quality of life of their residents.2
Communities can make environmental deci-
sions in ways that also strengthen the economy,
adapt to a changing climate, improve resiliency
to disasters, use public resources more effi-
ciently, revitalize neighborhoods, and improve
access to jobs and amenities.1
EPA defines the following principles3 to inte-
grate sustainability into the Agency's day-to-
day operations:
1. Conserve, protect, restore and improve
the supply and quality of natural resources
and environmental media (energy, water,
materials, ecosystems, land and air) over
the long term;
2. Align and integrate programs, tools,
incentives, and indicators to achieve as
many positive outcomes as possible in
environmental, economic, and social
systems; and,
3. Consider the full life cycles of multiple
natural resources, processes, and pollutants
in order to prevent pollution, reduce waste,
and create a sustainable future.
Emphasizing these principles, EPA is
working to support states, local governments
and communities in making sustainable envi-
ronmental decisions. SHC research is develop-
ing the science needed to support such deci-
sion making.
2For more information about the impact of the built
environment on the natural environment and public health,
see "Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review
of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and
Environmental Quality" (2nd edition, 2013) at http://www.
epa.gov/smartgrowth/built.htm.
'Fiscal Year 2014-2018 EPA Strategic Plan http://www2.
epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-04/documents/epa
strategic plan fvl4-18.pdf
3lbid.
SHC's objective is to provide a better under-
standing of the associations and causal rela-
tionships between public health, well-being,
and ecosystem goods and services. SHC is de-
veloping the underlying research and tools to
offer solutions to community-based decision-
makers within and outside the Agency. SHC is
committed to providing communities access to
high-quality information and tools to help them
evaluate the health and environmental impacts
of alternative development choices and opti-
mize decisions across the three dimensions of
sustainability - economic, social, and environ-
mental (Figure 1).
Problem Statement
Communities make decisions every day that
either directly or indirectly affect the environ-
ment, public health, and well-being. These de-
cisions can include the siting of roads, building
schools, zoning decisions, and many others. For
some decisions, the environmental, health and
well-being impacts (beneficial or adverse) are
not well understood and are rarely evaluated
from a systems or holistic perspective.
Environmental Integrity
Human Health and
Well-being
x*"^ ^fe>>.
Robust an
Resilient
Economy
Figure 1. The nested relationships of a
resilient economy existing within a healthy
society dependent on an intact, functional
environment illustrates the holistic definition
of sustainability that recognizes the hard
constraints imposed by environmental
limitations.
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As EPA employs regulatory and enforcement
approaches to environmental protection, it also
recognizes the need to promote concepts of
sustainability and stewardship to reduce envi-
ronmental risk and to promote health, econom-
ic vitality, and high environmental quality.
Program Vision
SHC's vision is to develop the science to sup-
port EPA's approach to a sustainable envi-
ronment and to expand community stake-
holders' capabilities to consider impacts of
decision alternatives.
Program Design
EPA is pursuing a cross-Agency strategy to ad-
vance optimized, sustainable environmental,
economic and social/health outcomes through
Agency decisions and actions, recognizing that
the Agency's traditional approaches to risk re-
duction and pollution control cannot always
fully achieve broad, long-term environmen-
tal quality and human health and well-being
goals4(Figure 2).
SHC's Perspective on Sustainability
The depletion of resources through the tragedy of the
commons is an economic theory by Garrett Hardin1,
and is often cited in connection with sustainable
development, meshing economic growth and
environmental protection resulting in improved well-
being. Commons in this sense has come to mean
nature's benefits such as the atmosphere, oceans,
rivers, fisheries; i.e., ecosystem goods and services.
SHC subscribes to the view of Elinor Ostrom2 who
found the tragedy of the commons not as difficult
to solve. She looked at how communities manage
common resources, such as fisheries, land, water,
air, and identified a number of factors conducive to
successful sustainable management. All of these
factors tend to operate as a holistic system with
appropriate community-based rules and procedures
in place with built-in incentives for responsible use
and consequences for overuse.
SHC's research program is intended to understand the
science of sustainable development and to develop
tools that allow communities to avert the tragedy of
the commons by using these tools to make informed
decisions leading to improved well-being.
'"The Tragedy of the Commons". Science 162 (3859): 1243-
1248.
2Ostrom, E. (2009), "A General Framework for Analyzing
Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems", Science 325 (5939):
419-422.
rotectter
Traditional approaches have set a "high floor"
Systems approach necessary for sustainable environmental, economic and social
outcomes
SHC research will develop science-based tools, data, and information to
support sustainable regulatory and non-regulatory approaches
:loor of Environmi
Protectio
CAA
CWA
RCRA
CERCLA
The 70 & 80's
Command & Control
SDWA
TSCA
FIFRA
MPRSA
FFDCA
Figure 2. How does EPA build on its strong foundation of command & control regulation,
enforcement, and focused remediation to fully achieve long-term and broad goals for sustainable
environmental quality and human health and well-being?
"Fiscal Year 2014-2018 EPA Strategic Plan;
http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-04/documents/epa strategic plan fvl4-18.pdf.
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Reaching these goals will require science and
focused innovation to support solutions that
will advance sustainable outcomes that:
recognize that while many environmental
problems are global, national, and re-
gional in nature, their impacts are expe-
rienced most acutely at the community
level - like increased flooding, heat stress,
contaminated water supplies, and poor
air quality;
foster and sustain community and
individual health and well-being by
providing research, tools and approaches
that acknowledge the interconnectedness
of the human-ecological system, and the
importance of a healthy environment
to promote human health, economic
resilience and social connectivity;
address the challenges that still remain
for communities with contaminated sites
or that are at risk of environmental health
disparities; and
consider the life cycle and beneficial
uses of materials in current manufactur-
ing, construction, and waste streams
to promote sustainable materials man-
agement.
The Sustainable and Healthy Communities
research program is designed to provide science
and technology to move the EPA toward these
outcomes. The SHC program is organized around
four research topics: (1) Decision Support and
Innovation; (2) Community Well-being: Public
Health and Ecosystem Goods and Services; (3)
Sustainable Approaches for Contaminated Sites
and Materials Management; and (4) Integrated
Solutions for Sustainable Communities. SHC
includes research and development responsive
to EPA's strategic goals and legislative mandates
while at the same time implementing key
recommendations of the National Research
Council (NRC), particularly from its reports
Sustainability and the U.S. EPA (the "Green
Book")5 and Sustainability for the Nation6. SHC
emphasizes systems approaches to identify
and assess alternative approaches to more
efficiently meet statutory mandates.
The NRC "Green Book"recommends
that human health is explicitly
included in the "social" drivers and
metrics of Sustainability. Health
has been part of SHC from its
inception and continues to be a
critical factor in the development
of indices, the linking of ecosystem
services to their beneficiaries, and a
focus on the health and well-being
of vulnerable groups and lifestages.
5NRC, 2011. Sustainability and the U.S. EPA ("Green Book"). Washington DC: National Academies Press
6NRC, 2013. Sustainability for the Nation. Washington DC: National Academies Press
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Building on the 2012-2016
Research Program
SHC is rooted in ORD's traditional research
strength in human health, ecosystems and eco-
system services, site characterization and reme-
diation for contaminated sites, and materials
management (Figure 3).
Since its inception, SHC has built the foun-
dation for integrating these previously dis-
parate research areas into a coherent re-
search program, and continues to do so
moving forward. The FY16-19 program brings
this expertise to bear on community-based
issues by placing environmental science in
the context of a decision-making framework,
as recommended by the NRC7-8. Structured de-
cision-making has been called common sense
for complex decisions. It provides SHC with a
framework for applying its science to the multi-
ple steps that facilitate making effective, defen-
sible, transparent decisions. It also allows SHC
to cast the NRC recommendation for building
a Sustainability Assessment and Management
Toolbox in the context of decision support (Fig-
ure 4). This framework enables scientific analy-
sis driven by stakeholders that is transparent
and flexible to different circumstances.
Sustainable & Healthy Communities Research Program
Community-Based
Human Health
Remediation/Restoration
of Contaminated Sites;
Materials Management
Ecosystem Services
Transdisciplinary Integration
ion
etween
Understanding Causal Relationships Between
Human Health, Ecosystems and Well-being
Data Bases, Tools, Models, Interoperability, and Assessments
SYSTEMS APPROACH to ACHIEVING SUSTAINABILITY
Total Resource Impacts & Outcomes (TRIO) Applied to Decisions
Affecting Communities
Figure 3. Roots of the SHC research and development program and redirection of separate
human health, contaminated sites, and ecosystem services approach toward integrated
approaches for environmental assessment and management.
7NRC, 2013. Sustainability for the Nation. Washington DC: National Academies Press
8NRC, 2011. Sustainability and the U.S. EPA ("Green Book"). Washington DC: National Academies Press
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In particular, SHC will draw from its own
research, the research of ORD's other National
Research Programs, EPA tools and databases,
other agencies, and the scientific community, to
help develop a suite of tools that have the ability
to analyze present and future consequences of
alternative decision options on the full range
of social, health, environmental, and economic
indicators, as depicted in Figure 4.
In practice this means that, for example, ORD's
fundamental research and long experience in
supporting risk management alternatives can
be brought to bear and expanded upon through
an exploration of linkages in the Scoping and
Options stage as shown in Figure 4. Various
methods, metrics, models, or databases can
be applied to a sustainability assessment to
understand the implications of alternative
decision scenarios that are relevant to the
objectives of decision makers. Market and non-
market valuation of ecosystem services, the cost
of illness and benefit of health promotion, and
analyses of remediation options can apply to
trade-off analyses. Finally, indicators and indices
drawn from SHC's database, developed by the
program or devised elsewhere can be applied
to the monitoring and evaluation of outcomes
of decisions to allow for the identification of
best practices or the revisiting of decisions as
needed (Figure 4).
Sustainability Assessment & Management for Integrated Solutions
Short and Long-term \
Impacts and Outcomes
Adaptive
Management/
Process
Improvement
Decision to be Made
Evaluation of
Outcomes
Performance
Metrics
Trends
Analysis
Indicators &
Indices
Monitoring/ Evaluation
^H of Outcomes
Integrated
Assessment
and
Management
Scoping and Options
Screening: Is
Sustainability
Assessment
needed?
'akeholder Improved
Engagement Communication
I' Management
Alternatives
Forecasting & Conceptual
Models
Prevention/Mitigation
Strategies
Net Benefits/Risk I
Next Generation Tools
Spatial Visualization
Decision Made
Result to
* Stakeholder
Trade-off/Synergy
Analysis
Life Cycle Assessment
Valuation of Ecosystem
Services
Structured Decision Making
Remediation Current Conditions &
Options Context
Sustainability
Assessment: Implications
of Decisions
Systems Dynamics Models
Valuation of Ecosystem Services
Forecasting Models
Spatial Visualization Life Cycle Assessment
Health Disparity Assessment Sector-based Impact
Assessments
Data, Metrics, Indicators Cumulative Risk
Figure 4. Sustainability assessment and management cycle for integrated solutions. Adapted from Figure
4-1 in the MAS "Green Book," SHC proposes to use this cycle in case studies to support community decisions and
to identify how and where in this cycle ORD and EPA research, data, models, tools, and experience can best be used
for decision support.
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Operationally, SHC considers well-being to be
the endpoint for sustainability. Well-being is
defined broadly and includes human health
and safety, continued access to the benefits
provided by ecosystem services, and economic
security and resilience, now and in the future.
It is important to consider the dynamic nature
of the integrated environmental-economic-
social system. Assessments of sustainability will
incorporate projected changes in demographics,
technology, ecosystem dynamics including
climate change, values and changing social
priorities, as well as emerging issues. SHC's
Sustainability Assessment and Management
Toolbox will be flexible enough to address
these changes as well as to support the varied
nature of community stakeholders who make
decisions under different contexts and with
differing levels of capacity.
EPA Partner and Stakeholder
Involvement
For this Strategic Action Research Plan (FY16-
FY19), program and regional office managers
and staff have been engaged in all stages of
research planning. SHC meets regularly with
EPA program and regional offices (Figure 5) to
provide research updates, collect information
on partner research needs, and discuss ORD's
response to these needs. This includes monthly
cross-Agency meetings and focused meetings
on topics of particular interest with EPA
partners, including the Office of Solid Waste
and Emergency Response, Office of Air and
Radiation and regional offices, and a major
annual or biannual face-to-face research update
and discussion.
Coordination with EPA program and regional
partners is an important component of the SHC
program. Some elements of the SHC program
directly support EPA program partners and,
thus, necessitate coordination through all
stages of the research development process.
Other elements are designated primarily to
support community decision-making and can
intersect with the activities of EPA program and
regional partners, who, through their regulatory
and implementation support activities, are also
directly engaged in supporting community
decision-making. This intersection presents
Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER)
Policy Analysis & Regulatory Management
Office of Superfund Remediation & Technical Innovation
Office of Resource Conservation & Recovery
Office of Underground Storage Tanks
Office of Emergency Management
Office of Brownfields& Land Revitalization
Federal Facilities Restoration & Reuse
SHC
Office of Water (OW)
Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water
Office of Science and Technology
Office of Wastewater Management
Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds
\
Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP)
Office of International & Tribal Affairs (OITA)
Office of Policy (OP)
Office of Sustainable Communities
National Center for Environmental Economics
Office of Air and Radiation (OAR)
Office of Air Quality Planning & Standards
Office of Transportation & Air Quality
Office of Radiation & Indoor Air
Office of Atmospheric Programs
EPA Regional Offices (R1-R10)
Figure 5. SHC agency partners.
SHC engages EPA's statutorily derived program offices, all 10 regional offices, and other program offices.
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opportunities for both ORD and EPA program
and regional partners to work together to
leverage and complement each other's efforts
as they work to support communities. The
result of such coordination is not only improved
overall support for communities, but in many
cases, the identification and design of research
with dual benefits, supporting both community
and EPA program and regional needs.
As part of our research program, SHC directly
funds regional partners in collaborations
through the Regional Sustainability and
Environmental Science (RESES) Program to
support transdisciplinary development of
SHC's research and tools while addressing high-
priority regional needs. ORD also collaborates
closely with the regional offices through
the Regional Applied Research Effort (RARE)
program on projects across the six national
research programs.
In addition, SHC views states, tribes, and
local governments as key stakeholders
because of their role in making planning
decisions that affect their communities.
Stakeholder engagement, including community
stakeholders, in coordination with program and
regional partners, is essential for SHC research
going forward, recognizing that policy and
planning decisions contributing to sustainable
communities are not fundamentally technical
with some need for public input, but, rather,
fundamentally public with the need for
technical input9.
SHC meets with key leaders of community-rep-
resentative, sustainability-related organiza-
tions (e.g., ICLEI - Local Governments for Sus-
tainability, Urban Land Institute and the Health
Impact Project) at scientific and professional
meetings. Together, with the EPA's Office of
Sustainable Communities, these organizations
provide critical insights into the kind of commu-
nity-level actions that need additional informa-
tion or assistance to better foster sustainability.
Finally, SHC scientists are fully engaged with
their scientific peers in colleges and universities
and other Federal, state, local, and internation-
al agencies through formal and informal col-
laborations, professional societies, and through
participation of scientists external to the EPA in
SHC's regular seminar series.
Integration across the Research
Programs
EPA's six research programs work together to
address science challenges that are important
for more than one program. Coordination
efforts can range from formal integration
efforts across the programs at a high level to
collaborative research among EPA scientists
working on related issues.
To accomplish formal integration of research on
significant cross-cutting issues, EPA developed
several "Research Roadmaps" that identify
both ongoing relevant research and also
important science gaps that need to be filled.
These roadmaps serve to coordinate research
efforts and to provide input that helps shape
the future research in each of the six programs.
SHC program products are incorporated across
all of the roadmaps (Figure 6). For example,
climate change impacts on ecosystem goods
and services are assessed in research on
ecosystem production functions, mapped
in the EnviroAtlas and included in indices
of community vulnerability. SHC is the lead
national research program for Environmental
Justice (EJ), reflecting the community/place-
9Stave, K. Participatory system dynamics modeling for sustainable environmental management: observations from four
cases. (2010). Sustainability (2): 2762-2784; Beierle, T. C. and Cayford, J. Democracy in practice: public participation in
environmental decisions. Washington, DC: RFF Press 2002.
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based nature of EJ concerns. The STAR10
Centers for Environmental Health Disparities
and intramural research on community-based
cumulative assessment and tribal science
populate the Environmental Justice Roadmap
(Project 2.3). SHC's major investments in
the EPA/NIEHS STAR Centers for Children's
Environmental Health (see Project 2.3, below)
and grants on Healthy Schools are central
to the Children's Environmental Health
Roadmap. Lastly, SHC provides a multi-sector,
multimedia, systems approach to improving the
management of nitrogen and co-pollutants.
Table 1. Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program contributions to critical needs
identified by ORD Roadmaps. Checkmarks indicate a larger contribution of SHC activities and
interest in the identified science gaps of the roadmaps than a single checkmark; a blank indicates
no substantive role. SHC is the lead research program for ORD's Environmental Justice Roadmap.
ORD Roadmap
Climate Change
Environmental Justice
Children's Environmental
Health
Nitrogen & Co-Pollutants
SHC Topic Area
Decision-
support and
Innovation
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Contaminated
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Beyond the Roadmap topics, SHC integration
with other national research programs includes:
1. CSS - Life cycle analysis for pre- and post-
consumer-use materials management
2. SSWR - NetZero approaches; sustainable
watershed management; green infrastructure
decision support; ground water research
"Science to Achieve Results (STAR)
competitive grants are administered by
EPA's Office of Research and Development
National Center for Environmental Research.
3. HSRP - Development of indicators for and
spatial visualization of community resilience
and vulnerability to climate change and severe
weather; emergency response
4. ACE - Public health impacts of air pollutants to
susceptible populations, especially asthmatics;
development and application of air quality
modeling tools; influence of climate change on
public health; planning tools for transportation
networks and ports
5. HHRA-Cumulative risk assessment; health and
ecology linked to well-being; technical support
centers
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Research to Support EPA's Strategic
Plan
EPA's Strategic Plan advances optimized,
sustainable environmental, economic and
social/health outcomes through Agency
decisions and actions, positing that the Agency's
traditional approaches to risk reduction and
pollution control cannot always fully achieve
broad, long-term environmental quality and
human health and well-being goals11.
Table 1 describes how SHC's actionable science
primarily supports EPA's Strategic Goal 3 and
the Agency's cross-cutting strategies of Working
Toward a Sustainable Future and Making a
Visible Difference in Communities. Because
environmental impacts from all media affect
communities, we note that SHC's research also
informs EPA Goals with respect to Addressing
Climate Change and Improving Air Quality
and Protecting America's Waters. SHC is also
committed to the research and development
of tools that translate its science to move EPA
toward its strategy of Launching a New Era of
State, Local, and International Partnerships.
Statutory and Policy Context
EPA's statutory and regulatory requirements
have yielded a strong foundation of improved
environmental quality. However, the Agency
realizes that further progress can be made
by working within and beyond its traditional
approaches (see box to the right). SHC research
and technical support is designed to assist
the Agency to reach its immediate goals with
respect to contaminated sites, environmental
releases of oil, and sustainable materials
management. SHC's program is also designed
to help the Agency work toward its long-term
and broader environmental quality goals by
helping to identify and implement actions that
"Fiscal Year 2014-2018 EPA Strategic Plan http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2014-04/documents/epa
strategic plan fvl4-18.pdf
satisfy its legislative, executive, and regulatory
mandates while optimizing solutions to help
move communities toward their sustainability
and livability goals (Figure 7).
As mentioned above, EPA draws upon the Na-
tional Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for its
broad definition of sustainability. NEPA also pro-
vides the statutory basis for the environmental
assessment that will likely be a component of
more fully integrated sustainability assessment
approaches developed by SHC (Figure 4). SHC
also recognizes the importance of the interplay
between different environmental statutes for
the multi-sector and multimedia issues facing
communities.
EPA's Strategic Plan Cross-Agency Strategy:
Working Toward a Sustainable Future
Advance sustainable environmental
outcomes and optimize economic and
social outcomes through Agency decisions
and actions, which include expanding the
conversation on environmentalism and
engaging a broad range of stakeholders.
...Our traditional approaches to risk
reduction and pollution control cannot
always fully achieve our long-term and
broad environmental quality goals. The
interplay between different environmental
statutes and programs also requires renewed
attention to improve "synergy" and long-term
solutions. To this end, EPA will also embrace
a commitment to focused innovation
to support solutions that will advance
sustainable outcomes.
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Table 2. SHC Alignment with EPA Fiscal Year 2014-2018 Strategic Plan
EPA Strategic Goal
SHC Action
EPA Goal 3
Cleaning Up Communities
and Advancing Sustainable
Development
Technical support and research to reduce risk from contaminated
sites, build economic value through land restoration, address
risks posed by accidental releases of hazardous materials and
underground storage tanks, comprehensive protection of valuable
ground water resources
Research to develop more options for eliminating waste, safer
options for disposal of unavoidable waste, management of
electronics waste, and access to more options for beneficial re-use
and recovery of materials and energy from waste
Develop science-based tools to better engage citizens and inform
local decision making to support smart and sustainable growth
and equitable distribution of environmental benefits
Research to adequately consider children's unique susceptibilities
and vulnerabilities and to build capacity for implementation of
sustainable environmental programs for tribes
EPA Cross-Cutting Strategy:
Working Toward a
Sustainable Future
Structured decision making approaches and science to advance
sustainable environmental outcomes and optimize economic
and social/health outcomes of decisions and actions that affect
America's communities
Science to build a systems understanding of the built and natural
environments including their influences on human health and
well-being to facilitate community sustainability and sustainable
development
A "sustainability toolbox" that includes a suite of tools for use in
Sustainability Assessment and Management to move the Agency
toward adoption of a comprehensive sustainability framework
EPA Cross-Cutting Strategy:
Working to Make a Visible
Difference in Communities
Science supporting environmental justice: Integration of chemical
and non-chemical stressors in assessment, social determinants
of health and well-being, at-risk communities and lifestages,
environmental health disparities; Health Impact Assessment;
community-scale ecosystem services
Research-based tools, indicators, and databases to provide
relevant, robust, and transparent scientific data to support
Agency, state, and local policy and decision-making needs to build
healthy, sustainable, green neighborhoods, promote well-being,
reduce and prevent harmful exposures and health risks to children
and underserved, overburdened communities
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SHC's community-based research addresses
EPA responsibilities related to Superfund
and CERCLA, RCRA, and the Brownfields
Revitalization Act (Figure 7). Our ecosystem,
health, and well-being research supports
regulatory work carried out under these
statutes as well as the Clean Air Act and Clean
Water Act. SHC is also responsible for research
supporting the Oil Pollution Act of 1990,
the Natural Resource Damage Assessment
(NRDA), and the Resources and Ecosystem
Sustainability, Tourism Opportunities, and
Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast (RESTORE)
Act. SHC research on children's environmental
health, environmental health disparities,
social determinants of environmental health,
tribal science, and cumulative assessment are
responsive to Executive Orders on children's
health, tribal governance, and environmental
justice (Figure 7).
Drivers
President's Executive Orders
Children's Environmental Health
Environmental Justice
Environmental, Energy, and Economic
Performance
Impacts of Climate Change
National Environmental Policy Act
1969
Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation and Liability
Act (Superfund) 1980
SARA 1986
"Brownfields Law" 2002
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act 1976, 1986
Hazardous and Solid Waste
Amendments 1984
Oil Pollution Act 1990
Clean Air Act 1970
Clean Water Act 1977
Research and Development to Support
Sustainability
Toolbox of simple to complex tools that identify holistic
decision implications
New methods to quantify net risk/benefits and to identify non-
independence of actions
Systems-based assessment approaches that facilitate
optimization of outcomes
Sustainability indicators
Vulnerability Assessment and Remediation of
Contaminated Sites and Oil Spills, Brownfields
Contaminated sediments, groundwater, vapor intrusion
Underground storage tanks, pipelines, dispersants, National
Contingency Plan, Deep Water Horizon follow-up
Remediation to Restoration to Revitalization
Sustainable Materials Management
Expanded life-cycle analysis, beneficial use of industrial
wastes
Renewable energy from organic wastes, re-use of
construction and demolition debris
Health & Well-Being, Environmental Quality
Integrated nitrogen and 2° NAAQS, TMDLand non-point
source pollution
Ecosystems services classification and valuation
Integrated eco-health analysis (influence of the built and
natural environment on health and well-being)
Expanded HIA methods and supporting tools guidance
Tribal-focused indicators and assessment techniques
Cumulative assessment, including chemical and non-
chemical stressors, vulnerable lifestages, and overburdened
communities
Community-focused risk management guidance
Figure 6. Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program is responsive to EPAs
authorizing legislation and Executive Orders (left). Examples to the right illustrate the scope of
SHC activities with respect to these drivers (SARA: Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act;
HIA: Health Impact Assessment; NAAQS: National Ambient Air Quality Standards; TMDL Total
Maximum Daily Load).
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Research Program
Objectives
The SHC research program addresses four
broad research objectives that flow from EPA's
Strategic Plan, consultation with EPA program
and regional partners, and ORD scientists' un-
derstanding of pressing science needs. These
objectives are focused on addressing the envi-
ronmental challenges identified above and aim
to advance a more sustainable future.
Objective 1
Develop the data, models, and tools to ex-
pand community stakeholders' capabili-
ties to consider the social, economic, and
environmental impacts of decision alterna-
tives on community well-being, and to sup-
port the next generation of environmental
scientists.
SHC will assist decision makers who affect com-
munity sustainability through the development
of information, methods, and tools incorpo-
rating decision science, citizen science, spatial
analysis, cause-effect modeling, and sustain-
ability assessment. SHC tools will represent
simple to complex approaches that can be
used to frame decisions, increase community-
engagement, fully account for decision implica-
tions, and identify potential solutions that pro-
mote a more sustainable future.
Science Challenges:
Providing accessible science-based decision sup-
port to address the needs of the broad range of
community sizes, capacities, demographics, and
biophysical settings across the United States.
Using community characterization, typology,
and understanding about decision processes to
tailor or guide assessment and decision tools to
widely-shared or disparate needs.
Harnessing new information technology, stan-
dards, and protocols to improve delivery and ap-
plication of research results.
Incorporating locally held and owned data into
mapping tools, indicators, and indices to enable
communities to compare among different areas
thus allowing insights into where improvements
are possible.
Developing the next generation of environmental
scientists to help solve the next generation of
environmental problems.
Objective 2
Develop the causal relationships between
human well-being and environmental condi-
tions and the tools and metrics that allow
assessment and tracking of progress.
SHC will provide science and metrics that inform
the quantification, valuation and classification
of ecosystem services, improve understanding
of chemical and non-chemical determinants
of public health and well-being, and allow
assessment and tracking of changes. SHC will
explore the dynamics of integrated human-
ecological systems that identify implications
of changes in both the built and natural
environment on human well-being. SHC will
also develop information and approaches
that enable partners and stakeholders to
better assess and predict the environmental,
public health, and economic implications of
decision alternatives, promote individual and
community well-being with special attention
to vulnerable groups and life stages, and track
progress toward sustainability goals.
Science Challenges:
Providing the science foundation for the
relationship between the built and natural
environments and human health and well-being.
Developing indicators and indices that link envi-
ronmental quality to community health and well-
being, quantify changes and measure progress.
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Identifying the impact of social, economic, and
environmental drivers on community public
health, and providing tools to assist local decision
makers.
Using case studies to assess environmental
health disparities in vulnerable groups, including
children, to provide decision makers critical en-
vironmental public health information in future
community decisions that affect sustainability.
Improving the transferability of ecosystem series
production functions from one location or sce-
nario to others.
Quantifying the impacts of social, economic
and environmental drivers, particularly climate
change impacts, on final ecosystem goods and
services to improve community decision out-
comes and promote sustainability.
Identifying and integrating linkages between
ecosystem goods and services and human health
and well-being for use in risk, benefit-cost, or
health impact assessments and community deci-
sions.
Objective 3
Provide research and technical support for
cleaning up communities, ground water, and
oil spills; restoring habitats and revitalizing
communities; and advancing sustainable
waste and materials management.
SHC will provide the science needed to support
Agency goals with respect to community pub-
lic health, clean water, restoration and revital-
ization of contaminated sites, environmental
releases, and better management of materi-
als. This includes science to help partners and
stakeholders to improve the efficiency and ef-
fectiveness of addressing contaminated sedi-
ments, land, and ground water, and resultant
vapor intrusion. SHC research will also provide
and evaluate standards, products, data, and ap-
proaches to prevent, characterize, and clean up
environmental releases of petroleum and other
fuel products. SHC methods, models, tools, and
data will enhance sustainable materials man-
agement, including beneficial reuse.
Science Challenges:
Developing and applying methods to assess con-
taminated sites and to measure the long-and
short-term effectiveness of remediation and ex-
pediting the trajectory from remediation to res-
toration to revitalization.
Identifying response products and actions that
are effective on oil spills in a wide range of en-
vironmental settings to minimize environmental
and human consequences.
Identifying assessment and remediation ap-
proaches to minimize environmental damage
and human and ecological exposures from leak-
ing underground storage tanks.
Application of life cycle analysis and sustainable
materials management to resource use and re-
covery and energy efficiency.
Optimizing material use reduction, reuse, recy-
cling, disposal, and management to conserve
and minimize contamination of land, minimize
pollution emissions, and yield equitable co-bene-
fits throughout a community.
Objective 4
Develop a Sustainability Assessment and
Management Toolbox to help the Agency
and others build sustainability into day-to-
day operations.
SHC will bring together research from both
within SHC and external organizations to create
a "Sustainability Toolbox." These tools will
provide a systems approach to help optimize
actions that are based on a full accounting of the
costs, benefits, tradeoffs, and synergies among
social (including public health), economic,
and environmental outcomes of alternative
decisions.
Science Challenges:
Building a systems-level understanding into
an approach that supports decisions that
have long-term, broad, and beneficial impact
on community environmental quality, health
and well-being, and economic resilience.
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Providing flexible, holistic decision-support
tools that can be applied under varying decision
contexts for decision makers with different
values and capacities.
Analyzing present and future consequences of
alternative decision options on the full range of
social, environmental, and economic indicators.
Showing distributional impacts of alternative
options with particular reference to at-risk
communities and ecosystems.
Research Topics
Each of the research program objectives iden-
tified above corresponds with one of SHC's re-
search topics. Table 3 lists the topics and asso-
ciated near- and long-term aims.
Topic 1: Decision Support and
Innovation
Under this topic, SHC will develop the data,
models, and tools to expand community
stakeholders' capabilities to consider the social,
economic, and environmental impacts of
decision alternatives on community well-being.
For example, tools will incorporate decision
science techniques, spatial analysis, and
sustainability assessment to help users frame
decisions, increase community-engagement,
understand implications of decisions, and
identify potential solutions that promote a
more sustainable future.
Project 1.1: Decision Science and Support
Tools
While conceptually straightforward and intui-
tive, sustainability in practice is much harder
to understand. This project aims to develop
the science of sustainability and disseminate
tools and methods for integrating sustain-
ability approaches into EPA and community
decision-making. Decisions that promote sus-
tainable outcomes and minimize unintended
consequences require access to relevant infor-
mation, structured analytic approaches, tools
for assessing and optimizing outcomes, exam-
ining trade-offs, and tracking progress. Through
this project, we will improve our understanding
of community decision needs, identify common
characteristics of communities (i.e., community
typology), improve the design and interoper-
ability of sustainability tools, and partner with
communities to develop and test decision sup-
port tools to promote the practice of sustain-
ability.
SHC will approach its research objectives
through three focus areas:
1. Decision-focused Design and Use of Tools
Understand local decision processes and
patterns across communities to improve
assessment and decision tools. Recognizing
rapid changes in climate, demographics,
and economies and create resilient and
adaptive decision tools to meet changing
community needs. Consider how digital
tools can be used to engage communities
in identifying sustainability challenges and
regulatory compliance requirements and
elicit stakeholder input for solving those
challenges.
Project Highlights
Assessment of best practices in community-
focused decision support tool design
Report on emerging decision and computer
sciences methods
Inventory and searchable database of
available community-focused decision
support tools
Gap analysis of community needs for
sustainability assessment
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Table 3. SHC Research Topics: Near- and Long-Term Aims
Research Topic
Near-Term
Long-Term
Decision-support and
Innovation
Develop sustainability science;
test and evaluate science and
tools in communities; build
the components necessary
for integrated sustainability
assessment and management
that are most useful in a
community context
Incorporate science and tools
into the Sustainability Toolbox
envisioned in Topic 4
Community Well-being: Public
Health and Ecosystem Goods
and Services
Link across final ecosystem
goods and services
classification systems
and EnviroAtlas; enhance
understanding of beneficiaries
of ecosystem goods and
services; understand
modifiable factors and
health interventions; provide
indicators, indices and tools
to assess, track, and inform
community sustainability
Quantify and value ecosystem
goods and services; integrate
ecosystem goods and services
with public health and well-
being; develop and interpret
robust indicators and indices
of environmental performance
Sustainable Approaches
for Contaminated Sites and
Materials Management
Provide innovative research
and technical support to
address contaminated sites,
sediments, and ground water;
assess risks associated with
the reuse of materials; provide
EPA leadership on the National
Response Team; develop
and certify products for the
National Contingency Plan
Understand how changing
environmental conditions
affect spatial and temporal
variation of contamination;
recast waste into resources;
use life cycle analysis to inform
the material-energy-water
nexus; develop tools to map
and inform communities
about vulnerability to oil spills
and fuel tank leaks
Integrated Solutions for
Sustainable Communities
Build knowledge of buildings
and infrastructure, land use,
materials management, and
transportation sectors into
decision-support tools for
sustainable outcomes; develop
systems approaches for
community decisions through
case studies
Provide the data and tools
to mainstream sustainability
assessment and management
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2. Software Re-Configuration for Community-
Based Use
Evaluate how existing SHC tools can be
modularized and made interoperable
to increase their usefulness and reduce
obsolescence. Consider how locally held
data can be made accessible to inform
decisions that promote sustainability and
equity. For example, an interoperable
component for storm water management
using the EPA Storm Water Management
Model (SWMM, developed by SSWR) will
be used to provide storm water runoff
information within scenario planning tools
such as Urban Footprint.
3. Tool Development, Support, and Delivery
Determine how new information technolo-
gy can be harnessed to improve delivery of
SHC tools to stakeholders in communities.
Identify criteria and standards for future
tool development to facilitate collaborative
development of decision tools. Target de-
velopment and updates of tools to fill gaps
in decision-support needed for different
types of communities to promote sustain-
ability and well-being.
Products and their added value for the practice
of sustainability will be demonstrated through
case studies in conjunction with other SHC
projects and related to ORD's four cross-
cutting issues. This project will also likely rely
on science developed in other ORD research
programs to provide the technical information
for local decision makers. The case studies will
integrate community preferred approaches and
values along with science-based sustainability
assessments.
Project 1.2: EnviroAtlas
The EnviroAtlas is a Web-based collection of
tools and data resources that can be used
to inform many different types of decisions.
It allows users to explore the supply and
demand of ecosystem goods and services,
linkages to human health and well-being, and
the distribution of stressors (e.g. pollutants
and pollution) and other drivers of change
(e.g. population change and demographics,
land use). The EnviroAtlas includes national-
scale coverage of these data, and also has a
community component that includes fine-scale
land use/land cover data to explore linkages
between the built and natural environment and
environmental and human health outcomes.
The easy-to-use analysis tools make this
wealth of information broadly accessible to
stakeholders and decision makers at every level,
providing the ability to incorporate systems-
level understanding of decision implications on
ecosystem services, human health and well-
being, and economic resilience.
Three focus areas serve to organize the activities
needed to achieve the research objectives:
1. Improved Functionality and Case Studies
Crosswalk ecosystem service indicators
and indices from EnviroAtlas with the EPA
Final Ecosystem Goods & Services-Classifi-
cation System and the National Ecosystem
Services Classification System. Develop de-
cision support case studies from real world
applications of EnviroAtlas.
Project Highlights
Land cover classification for additional
communities
Eco-Health Relationship Browser, version 2
Nationally consistent geospatial indicators
and indices
Annual updates to EnviroAtlas application
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2. New Tools and Data Layers
Enhance information for decision-making
at local, state, regional, and national
scales. Develop data for the community
scale metrics and indices contained within
EnviroAtlas to explicitly link features of
the built and natural environment to
community well-being. New analysis tools
are under development that will provide
user-defined indices to track progress
towards sustainability goals, and to
explore the implications of climate change
scenarios in terms of heat stress, water
availability, and energy use.
3. Outreach and Communication
Develop Web materials to inform decision-
makers and educational and research
users about how to use EnviroAtlas. Solicit
feedback to inform future development.
Project 1.3: Environmental Workforce and
Innovation
EPA recognizes that STEM (scientific, technical,
engineering and mathematical) competence
is essential to the Nation's future well-being
in terms of national security and competitive
economic advantage. One aspect of community
health and vitality is the availability of an
adequate supply of scientists, technicians,
engineers, and mathematicians, to develop
innovative technologies and solutions for
community application. With this in mind, SHC
manages EPA's Greater Research Opportunities
(GRO) and Science to Achieve Results (STAR)
Fellowships to help ensure there is a highly
skilled pool of technical professionals that
are trained to address society's pressing
environmental issues. EPA's People, Prosperity
and the Planet program (P3), also managed
by SHC, is an innovative student design
competition for sustainability. Student teams
designing tangible, cutting-edge solutions for
communities to use to address environmental
challenges. SHC also manages EPA's Small
Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program,
which gives awards to small, high-tech
companies to help develop and commercialize
cutting-edge environmental technologies.
This project includes two focus areas:
1. Fellowships
The GRO Undergraduate and STAR Gradu-
ate Fellowship programs are part of the na-
tional effort to help ensure that the United
States meets its current and projected hu-
man resource needs in the environmen-
tal science, engineering, and policy fields.
The goals of the programs are to encour-
age promising students to obtain advanced
degrees and pursue careers in an environ-
mental field. These goals are consistent
with the mission of EPA. Both programs
have proven to be beneficial to the pub-
lic by providing a steady stream of well-
trained environmental specialists to meet
society's environmental challenges. The
most recent solicitation emphasizes a mul-
tidisciplinary background for candidates
to encourage development of this type of
curricula and contribute to the evolution of
the environmental field.
Project Highlights
Annual fellowship awards
Small Business Innovative Research
Phase I and II awards
2. People, Prosperity and the Planet (P3) and
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Increased awareness and understanding of
sustainability are critical components for
promoting a systemic shift towards more
environmentally benign and sustainable
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products, processes, and systems. P3
and SBIR are programs that demonstrate
sustainability values in the creation of
design technologies and solutions to
environmental problems. P3 and SBIR
have provided incentive funding (1) to
encourage sustainability thinking and
research experiences for students and
(2) to small businesses to translate their
innovative ideas into commercial products
that address environmental problems.
These innovations are a source of new
technologies that can provide improved
environmental protection at lower cost
with better performance and effectiveness.
P3 and SBIR help spawn successful
commercial ventures that not only
improve our environment, but also create
jobs, increase productivity and economic
growth, and enhance the international
competitiveness of the U.S. technology
industry.
Topic 2: Community Weil-Being:
Public Health and Ecosystem
Goods and Services
Topic 2 strives to develop the causal relationship
between human well-being and environmental
conditions as well as the tools and metrics that
allow assessment and tracking of progress. For
example, SHC research will provide the science
that informs the quantification, valuation,
and classification of ecosystem services,
improve the understanding of chemical and
non-chemical determinants of public health
and well-being, and allow assessment and
tracking of changes over time. SHC will explore
the dynamics of integrated human-ecological
systems and identify implications of changes
in both the built and natural environment on
human well-being, paying special attention to
vulnerable groups and lifestages.
Project 2.1: Final Community-Based
Ecosystem Goods and Services
EPA recognizes that too often, only what is
quantified matters. However, many of the goods
and services provided by the environment have
not been measured; thus, they are not factored
into decision-making in a robust and transparent
way. This project aims to provide the knowledge
and tools necessary to identify, quantify, and,
ultimately, assign value to ecosystem goods and
services. This will facilitate the incorporation
of ecological benefits into decision-making
processes.
Final Ecosystem Goods and Services
(PEGS) are defined as components of
nature, directly enjoyed, consumed, or
used to yield human well-being
Specifically, this project includes five focus
areas:
1. Final Ecosystem Goods and Services (FEGS)
Classification, Metrics and Production
Includes quantifying the linkages between
the supply of ecosystem goods and
services and changes in human health and
well-being (including intermediate and
incremental changes and indirect human
health endpoints). Develops the EcoService
Models Library to provide models to users
to estimate benefits from ecosystem goods
and services.
2. Benefits of FEGS
Identifies how FEGS are distributed
among populations within a community,
including vulnerable populations such
as environmental justice communities.
Quantifies benefits of ecosystem goods
and services on human health endpoints.
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Couples PEGS with national economic
accounting systems through collaboration
with OW on the development of the
National Ecosystems Services Classification
System (NESCS).
3. Climate/Stressors
Quantifies the effects of climate
change and co-occurring stressors on
the benefits of PEGS, with particular
attention to human health endpoints.
4. Coordinated Case Studies
Builds on the previous three areas to
test whether concepts are transferable
and scalable. Efforts will focus on
existing conceptual relationships and
move towards developing quantitative
relationships among major stressors
and drivers of change, PEGS, and
consequent changes to human well-being.
5. Integration, Synthesis and Strategic
Communication
Integrates and synthesizes research across
focus areas and communicates results
to EPA partners, the general public, and
the scientific community. Assesses the
transferability, scalability, applicability, and
relevance of ecosystem service-related
frameworks, models, methods (including
community engagement), and tools that
link the production of PEGS to human
health and well-being.
Project Highlights
Report on valuing community benefits of PEGS:
economic benefits transfer methods and human health
benefits
Report on EcoService Models Library: structure, content
and linkage to community-based decision-support tools
Community metrics and indicators of PEGS
Report on existing/needed ecological production
functions to address climate change
Report on lessons learned from SHC PEGS community-
This project is of particular interest to program
partners and includes SHC research to support
the Nitrogen & Co-Pollutants Roadmap and
the Climate Change Roadmap. There are also
connections to research in ACE, SSWR, and
HHRA linking health, ecosystems and well-
being.
Project 2.2: Community Public Health and
Well-being
Community decision makers make decisions
every day that indirectly affect the environment,
public health, and well-being (e.g., siting
roads, building schools). In most community
decisions, the environmental, health, and
well-being impacts (beneficial or adverse) are
not well understood or fully considered. This
project aims to provide communities access
to high-quality information and tools to help
planners evaluate the health and environmental
impacts of alternative development choices
and optimize decisions across the three
dimensions of sustainability - economic,
social, and environmental. This project also
seeks to provide a better understanding of the
associations and causal relationships between
public health, well-being, and ecosystem goods
and services.
The research is organized into three focus areas:
1. Community engagement, assessment tools
and decision-support tools
Refine, develop, and enhance EPA
information and tools to help communities
and tribes identify and prioritize risks to
inform local decisions. Tools include, for
example:
Community-Focused Exposure and Risk
Screening Tool (C-FERST)
an online information access and community
mapping tool to help communities learn
more about environmental, health, and
socioeconomic issues in their community. It
is designed to assist communities with the
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challenge of defining and prioritizing issues,
and make decisions about exposures and risks
within their community.
Tribal-Focused Environmental Risk and
SustainabilityTool (Tribal-FERST)
A Web-based information and mapping tool
designed with tribes to provide easy access to
the best available human health and ecological
science.
Community Cumulative Assessment Tool
(CCAT) -
An educational tool that informs the public on
the process of assessing cumulative impacts. It
combines decision analysis and risk assessment
to identify, evaluate, rank, and prioritize
stressors and solutions.
Health Impact Assessment (HIA)
A process for evaluating the potential effects
of a policy or program on the health of a
population, and the distribution of those
effects within the population. HIAs consider
determinants of human health stemming from
all of the three aspects of sustainability- social,
environmental, and economic. For example,
HIA takes into consideration factors such as
employment, education, and climate change.
Project Highlights
Public release of C-FERST and Tribal-FERST
Health Impact Assessment resource anc
compilation
Report on the utilization of bioavailabilit
methods to evaluate sustainable remedia
technologies aimed to reduce community
exposure to metals in soils
Social determinants of environmental impact-
on disease
The impact of land use decisions on hei
outcomes
Community vulnerability index
Progress review summary report of ft
Cumulative Risk Assessment grz
2. Environmental drivers of community health
and well-being
Understand how the conditions where
people live give rise to various risk factors.
Use population-based approaches to
identify modifiable factors associated
with increased environmental health risk
combined with clinical and mechanistic
studies. The goal is to improve risk
assessment and enable communities
and individuals to take action to protect
themselves from environmental risks. Links
between ecosystem goods and services
and social and environmental modifiers
(e.g., access to green space, food deserts,
housing quality) will also be considered.
3. Improving community health, well-being
and exposure assessments
Provide improved access to health and
exposure data, inform and ground truth
existing SHC tools, and explore innovative
approaches to better understand and
assess environmentally driven community
health and well-being conditions. Develop
rapid, reliable, and inexpensive methodsfor
assessing the bioavailability of metals from
contaminated soils and other exposure
matrices to support the development of
sustainable remediation technologies.
Explore citizen science approaches, such as
using sensors to inform communities about
exposure and health conditions.
This project has aspects that will be coordinated
with ORD's other research programs, specifically
the environmental public health research in
ACE, the cumulative risk assessment work in
HHRA, and green infrastructure (Gl) work in
SSWR (e.g., Gl implementation is the decision
context for an HIA case study).
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Project 2.3: Assessing Environmental Health
Disparities in Vulnerable Groups
There is growing recognition that environmental
and social factors interact in complex ways to
determine human health and well-being, and
that optimizing environments for healthy and
sustainable living requires an understanding of
this complexity. This project focuses on how the
built, natural, and social environments interact
to influence health and well-being through
all life stages. The overall project goal is to
understand how non-chemical stressors (e.g.,
climate change, social factors) act as modifiers
of chemical exposures and impact the health
and well-being of vulnerable groups. Selected
emphasis will be placed in three research focus
areas:
1. Children's Environmental Health
A complex array of environmental factors
contribute to lifelong health and well-
being. Among these are exposures to
multiple manmade and naturally occurring
substances which may occur both at critical
windows of development and across the life
course. This complexity calls for a systems
approach to inform decisions designed to
optimize our community environments
(built, natural, social) for human health,
especially for children, and environmental
integrity. Intramural research complements
the work underway in the EPA/National
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
(NIEHS) Children's Environmental Health
and Disease Prevention Research Centers
(Children's Centers) program. Research
efforts in children's health are coordinated
through the Children's Environmental
Health Roadmap, and this project is SHC's
contribution to that cross-cutting research.
2. Tribal Communities
EPA and the National Tribal Science Council
have identified the need for evidence-
based data and tools to help Tribes identify
and anticipate potential environmental
problems. This project will extend
efforts from other SHC projects to
tribal communities. For example, using
participatory approaches, SHC and
tribes can test tools (e.g., EnviroAtlas,
Tribal-FERST, HIAs) and generate the
local data needed to populate the tools
and help tribal communities. The STAR
Tribal Science Program will continue to
contribute knowledge about tribal-specific
environmental stressors (e.g., climate
change, indoor air quality) as well as
causal linkages to tribal health and well-
being. EPA is also generating data (e.g., fish
consumption, dietary exposure modeling)
relevant to tribes to incorporate into SHC
tools.
Project Highlights
The role of diet and obesity in
determining bioaccessibility of
organics absorbed into different
types of soils and house dusts
Interactions of chemical and non-
chemical environmental stressors
that impact children's healthy
development and well-being
EPA/NIEHS Children's Centers
Program -15 Years of Success
Key findings and recommendations
from the research of the Sustainable
and Healthy Tribes grants
Summary report for the research
of the EPA/NIMHD Centers of
Excellence on Environmental and
Health Disparities Research
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3. Disproportionately Impacted Communities
Environmental health disparities are a con-
sequence of multiple factors contributing
to vulnerability. This project will expand be-
yond disproportionate exposure to chemi-
cals and their associated adverse health ef-
fects with the goal of understanding how
environmental and social determinants
(the conditions in which people are born,
grow, live, work, and age) of health together
can contribute to health inequities. These
conditions are determined by community,
governmental, and business decisions;
education; and changes in local ecology.
Specifically, this research aims to elucidate
the relative contribution of these condi-
tions and community stressors (e.g., be-
haviors, environmental factors, economic
factors) in driving health disparities. The
Centers for Excellence in Health Disparities
are integrating environmental and social
factors and testing approaches for reduc-
ing their negative impacts on health dis-
parities. This topic area contains a signifi-
cant portion of SHC's research related to
environmental justice.
1. University of Washington - Seattle, WA 4. UC San Francisco - San Francisco, CA
2. UC Davis - Davis, CA
3. UC Berkeley/Metayer - Berkeley, CA
3. UC Berkeley/Eskenazi - Berkeley, CA
3. UC Berkeley/Tager - Berkeley, CA
5. National Jewish Health - Denver, CO
6. University of Illinois - Urbana-
Champaign, IL
7. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ml
S. Duke University - Durham, NC
9. Johns Hopkins University- Baltimore, MD
10. Columbia University- New York, NY
11. Brown University- Providence, Rl
12. Dartmouth College - Hanover, NH
Figure 7. EPA/NIEHS Children's Centers Program.
EPA and NIEHS jointly fund Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research
Centers that were established to explore ways to reduce children's health risks from environmental
factors. Since 1998, EPA has contributed about $150 million, and NIEHS has contributed similarly.
Currently, we fund 14 Centers (see map) together. The goals of these Centers are to understand how
environmental exposures and social factors affect children's health and to design interventions and
prevention techniques to improve health and well-being. Many of the Centers use community-based
participatory methods to partner with communities throughout the research process to develop shared
decision making and ownership. Using these approaches, the Centers are evaluating environmental
exposures from air pollutants and endocrine disrupting chemicals, for example, and health outcomes
such as asthma, autism, adverse birth outcomes.
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Project 2.4: Indicators, Indices and the Report
on the Environment
Lack of information on the environment, human
health and well-being is a barrierto communities
making more sustainable decisions. Indicators
and indices (combinations of indicators) allow
EPA partners and stakeholders to assess, track,
and equitably weigh integrated human health,
socio-economic, environmental, and ecological
factors in their decision-making. This project
will develop, evaluate, and advance the use
of indicators and indices to help EPA and
community stakeholders foster sustainability.
This work is done in collaboration with the
other ORD research programs, including
with Homeland Security on climate resiliency
indicators and HHRAon public health indicators.
The four focus areas include:
1. State of the Practice for Sustainability
Indicators
Identify the current state of practice for
environmental indicators in sustainability
research and design research needed
to fill information gaps. Specifically, this
project will develop integrated compendia
of indicators and indices to synthesize the
state of the practice.
2. Development of Indicators of Social,
Ecological, and Community Resilience
Advance the field of resilience science by
exploring the interdependence of human
and natural systems to inform integrated
approaches for community sustainability
planning and understanding potential
trade-offs. Explore the linkages between
sustainability, resilience, and environmental
change and develop information on
resilience to inform adaptive management
of social-ecological systems, which is key to
advancing sustainability.
3. Interpreting environmental conditions
in terms of ecological relevance, public
health outcomes, and well-being
endpoints
Utilize holistic approaches for assessing
human health and well-being in the
interpretation of changes in environmental
conditions over time. Evaluate the utility
of indicators and indices that are used
in SHC decision-support tools, such as
DASEES, EnviroAtlas, and the Report on
the Environment. Indicators and indices
developed must address relevant data
needs and be technically sound, easily
understood, and accepted by stakeholders.
4. Report on the Environment (ROE)
Continue development and improvement
of the ROE to meet changing programmatic
needs, respond to newscientific information
and incorporate new indicators. This
project will (1) develop and maintain a
scientifically refreshed and up to date
ROE website; (2) develop new indicators
in collaboration with EPA program offices;
and (3) develop a new component piece to
the ROE that analyzes and interprets the
reported trends in a specific topic area.
Project Highlights
State of the Science for Environmental
Indicators
Environmental Public Health Indicators
Research Synthesis Report
- Development of a climate resilience screening
index
Modified Human Well-being Index mode
linking service flows to well-being endpoi
Updated Environmental Quality Index wi
multiple geographic scales
Updated Report on the Environment (Ro.
with some analysis and interpretation of trends
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Topic 3: Sustainable Approaches
for Contaminated Sites and
Materials Management
This topic provides research and technical sup-
port for cleaning up communities, ground wa-
ter, and oil spills, restoring habitats and revital-
izing communities, and advancing sustainable
waste and materials management. Specifically,
this work will help partners and stakeholders
improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ad-
dressing contaminated sediments, land, and
ground water and resultant vapor intrusion.
SHC research will also provide and evaluate
standards, products, data, and approaches to
prevent, characterize, and clean up environ-
mental releases of petroleum and other fuel
products. SHC methods, models, tools, and
data will enhance sustainable materials man-
agement.
Project 3.1: Contaminated Sites
It is important to reduce or prevent human
exposure to contaminants and to ensure that
ground water quality meets drinking water
standards. Contaminated ground water is
found at most Superfund sites and cleanup
can take decades to complete. Subsurface
contamination can also be the source of
volatile contaminants that enter residences
or businesses, known as vapor intrusion, and
expose individuals to hazardous pollutants.
Discharge of contaminated ground water may
increase contaminant loadings to sediments
and to surface water.
This project will build on previous contaminated
sites research and will involve the assessment
of metrics for remediation, restoration, and
revitalization in a context of potential spatial
and temporal changes due to various factors,
including climate change. The three focus areas
of this project are:
1. Technical Support for Contaminated Sites
ORD will continue to provide valuable as-
sistance to EPA programs to deal with
contaminated sites and regional offices
through five technical support centers,
three of which are supported by SHC:
Ground Water; Engineering; and Monitor-
ing and Site Characterization.12 Knowledge
obtained through these activities provides
the basis for designing future research.
2. Research on Site Characterization,
Remediation, and Management
This area includes research on contaminat-
ed ground water and sediments and vapor
intrusion. Priorities for ground water re-
search include: improving the application
and interpretation of high resolution char-
acterization technologies; characterizing
sites and mitigating contamination via back
diffusion; and developing and evaluating
improvements in treatment delivery and
extraction technologies and strategies to
clean up contamination. Priority research
for contaminated sediments includes: bet-
ter understanding linkages between con-
taminant concentrations in sediment and
fish tissue concentrations, improving ana-
lytical technology to evaluate hydrophobic
organics and metals in soil and sediment,
and evaluating the effectiveness of remedi-
ation alternatives and their associated im-
pacts. Research on vapor intrusion will ad-
dress the use of external remedial controls
to reduce vapor intrusion and decrease the
need for in-structure intrusive sample col-
lection or in-building remediation systems.
12The other two technical support centers, Superfund/Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessment Technical Support
Centers, are supported by ORD's Human Health Risk Assessment (HHRA) research program, and there is coordination
among all five centers across the two programs.
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3. Research on Temporal and Spatial Impacts
of Contaminated Ground Water - Site
Reuse, Revitalization, and Environmental
Justice
The goals of this focus area are to
understand the temporal and spatial
changes in ground water, vapor intrusion
and contaminated sediments in conjunction
with social and economic factors related
to community water supplies to address
environmental justice concerns, Great
Lakes Areas of Concern, and Brownfields
needs. Research includes understanding
aquifer vulnerability and private water well
use, contaminant plume transport and its
impact on public and private water supply
wells, and social and economic factors
which influence water use and water
valuation.
Project Highlights
Technical Support Center annual reports
A decision-support system to guide the use
of geophysical characterization and monitoring
technologies for environmental investigations
Report on flux-based site management
Methods for testing freshwater sediment toxicity
and bioaccumulation
Spatial assessment of contaminated ground
water at hazardous waste sites near vulnerable
Project 3.2: Environmental Releases of Oils
and Fuels
EPA is responsible for assessing environmental
releases of oil from multiple sources, including
fuel from leaking underground storage tanks.
These releases occur in communitiesthroughout
the country and potentially affect human
health and the environment through their
impacts on water quality (including drinking
water supplies) or direct exposure to toxic
constituents. Innovative research approaches
will help to achieve more efficient and effective
management of oil spills, including fuel. This
research supports development of improved
protocols, guidelines, regulations, and response
efforts to protect communities from exposures
to environmental releases of oils and fuels.
The private sector will use these protocols to
advance remediation/response technologies
for various conditions and oil products.
This project addresses impacts to community
public health and ecosystems of oil spills and
leaking underground storage tanks:
1. Oil Spills
Research will focus on two aspects of
spill response: (1) spill preparedness
via product testing protocols, and (2)
innovative spill response options tailored
to specific oils and environments, including
sustainability dimensions of competing
actions. This includes research to better
understand the environmental impacts
of oil spills (including non-petroleum oil)
and dispersants as well as research to
develop innovative and more sustainable
technologies to assess and mitigate the
impact of oil spills.
2. Leaking Underground Storage Tanks
Research will focus on understanding
emerging fuel compatibility with tanks
as well as modeling and remediating
contaminant plumes resulting from leaking
underground tanks and their impacts on
buildings and water supplies, both private
and public. The research is intended
to: (1) develop an improved conceptual
model for plume formation and migration
from petroleum hydrocarbons, ethanol,
and other additives; (2) develop a better
understanding of fuel behavior at the
water table and impacts to water supply
wells resulting from precipitation changes
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due to climate change; and (3) develop the
capacity to identify areas with high density
of private wells, potentially leaking tanks,
redevelopment sites, and proximities to
water supplies.
Project Highlights
Report on development of a surface
washing agent effectiveness protocol for
products on the National Contingency Plan
Schedule
Report on the biodegradation and toxicity
of diluted bitumen crude oils to determine
fate of bitumen discharged in water
Report on ethanol corrosion studies and
ongoing technical support to states
Report on density of domestic water
well locations and proximity to leaking
underground storage tanks and potential
brownfields sites, through the use of GIS
tools
Project 3.3: Sustainable Materials
Management
The goal of this project is to enable partners
and stakeholders to minimize environmental
impacts associated with products and materials
through reduced consumption and increased
reuse and recycling. Specifically, the research
will develop and demonstrate life cycle assess-
ment paradigms and material, product, and
process design strategies that lead to reduced
environmental impacts while preserving natu-
ral capital. Greenhouse gas emissions will be an
important aspect of this project as well.
This project includes three focus areas:
1. Life Cycle Management of Materials
This focus area will consider both sus-
tainable materials management and
life cycle assessment (LCA) to develop
an integrated framework to support
decision-making. Other methodologies for
community materials management, such as
urban metabolism13, will also be explored.
This project will develop life cycle inven-
tory data focused on end-of-life materials
management processes (e.g., landfilling,
recycling), which are existing data gaps and
will help develop data for baseline model-
ing scenarios. Data developed in this proj-
ect will be openly available through an EPA
portal to the Federal LCA data commons.
LCA work is done in coordination with re-
lated efforts in other programs, such as
CSS.
2. Reuse ofOrganics and Other Materials
This focus area will develop dynamic ap-
proaches to assist communities in en-
hancing energy generation and materi-
als recovery from existing waste streams
or underutilized material flows. Reuse
of materials (e.g. industrial, agricultural,
and organic and inorganic sources) may
offset the use of virgin materials in prod-
ucts or processes and potentially lead to
reducing their adverse effects on the en-
vironment and human/ecosystem health.
Included in this focus area is research
in conjunction with the U.S. Army's Net
Zero initiative. The Net Zero Initiative en-
ables the Army to appropriately safeguard
available resources and manage costs by
reducing the generation of solid waste.
3. Regulatory Support
This focus area will provide technical
support, primarily to OSWER on
various aspects of sustainable materials
management. We expect these issues to
evolve over time. Examples of previous
support focus on coal combustion residues,
"Kennedy et al. 2007 define urban metabolism as
"the sum total of the technical and socio-economic
process that occur in cities, resulting in growth,
production of energy and elimination of waste."
Source: Kennedy, C, Cuddihy, J., and Engel-Yan, J.
(2007). The changing metabolism of cities. Journal
of Industrial Ecology. 11(2), 43-59.
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use of the leaching environmental assess-
ment framework, and evaluation of emp-
ty pharmaceutical containers. Electronic
waste is another important area for EPA
under the National Strategy for Electron-
ics Stewardship. There is a lack of coherent
information on the domestic movement of
used electronics, so SHC will address this
need and, if possible, develop an online
tracking tool.
Project Highlights
Publically accessible EPA portal to the LCA
commons installed on a linked open data (LOD)
Risk-Informed Materials Management tools
system, technology transfer, and demonstration
applications (e.g., reuse scenarios for biosolids)
Comprehensive assessment of the flow of used
electronics for selected states
State of the practice for construction demolition
and recycling
Resiliency of waste containment systems to
extreme weather events
Topic 4: Integrated Solutions for
Sustainable Communities
The goal of Topic 4 is to help the Agency build
sustainability into its day-to-day operations.
SHC will provide community stakeholders with
a suite of simple to complex tools that used
together provide a systems approach to help
them optimize actions that are based on a full
accounting of the costs, benefits, tradeoffs, and
synergies among social (including public health),
economic, and environmental outcomes of
alternative decisions. Specifically, SHC aims
to develop a sustainability assessment and
management toolbox for use by community
stakeholders.
Project 4.1: Integrated Solutions for
Sustainable Communities
This project aims to help partners and stake-
holders consider the three dimensions of sus-
tainability in their decision-making so that they
can minimize unanticipated outcomes. It will
bring together research from both within SHC
and external organizations to create a "Sustain-
ability Toolbox." These tools will bring a multi-
sector, cross-disciplinary, systems perspective
to decision-making. This project will: (1) pro-
vide clear context-specific information to deci-
sion makers on selection and use of tools and
best practices, (2) improve, extend, and inte-
grate tools and approaches for sustainability
assessment, and (3) demonstrate both the use
of a suite of complementary tools and the ef-
fectiveness of a holistic approach for resolving
complex issues and advancing sustainability.
This project has three focus areas:
1. Sustainability Toolbox
Under this focus area, ORD is working
with partners to develop a question-based
interactive Web-based tool (commonly
referred to as a "wizard") to guide users
to find the most pertinent information
and tools to meet their needs. The initial
wizard is focused on green infrastructure
(drawing on research and tools developed
in SSWR and across EPA). The next
wizard is planned to focus on waste and
materials management. This Community
Sustainability Analysis System (CSAS),
will help partners and stakeholders
make decisions that will advance more
sustainable outcomes.
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2. Susie/inability Assessment and
Management (SAM) Process for
Communities
This work builds on SHC's existing sector-
based synthesis papers on land use, build-
ings and infrastructure, materials manage-
ment and waste, and transportation. It will
develop integrated approaches to enable
communities to holistically evaluate deci-
sions across these sectors. A SAM is de-
fined as an approach that provides tools
and information that a community can use
to assess decision alternatives in a systems
context, evaluate the implications and trad-
eoffs across the sectors, and move toward
more sustainable solutions. We anticipate
developing a flexible approach that can be
tailored to individual communities' needs.
3. Case Studies
This focus area includes applications of
systems approaches for sustainability to
real-world problems through demonstra-
tion projects. Integrated nitrogen man-
agement, ports, and community water
management are three topics that will be
addressed. These demonstrations will al-
low us to refine the sustainability assess-
ment process and evaluate the effective-
ness of systems-based decision-making
and management practices that integrate
social, environmental, and economic di-
mensions. The demonstrations will utilize,
test, and evaluate existing sustainability
tools; identify gaps in data and assessment
capabilities; and increase our understand-
ing of key relationships that can inform fu-
ture sustainability assessments. The goal
is that these case studies will be general-
izable and transferable to other communi-
ties and move the science of sustainability
assessment forward.
Project Highlights
Product waste and materials
management online wizard
Alternate management scenarios
to inform urban sustainability
assessment and management
decisions
Atlas of nitrogen and co-pollutant
maps
Interactive effects from climate
changes and nitrogen loading on
terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems
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Anticipated Research
Accomplishments and
Projected Impacts
SHC research is building a better understanding
of the associations and causal relationships
between public health, well-being, and
ecosystem goods and services. This research
will have the greatest impact when products
are developed and delivered in ways most
useful to SHC partners and stakeholders. ORD
products specifically designed to be useful in
the hands of partners are termed "outputs."
The proposed SHC outputs for FY16 to FY19 are
listed in Appendix A. Examples of anticipated
accomplishments for each research topic area
are summarized below.
Decision-support and Innovation
Research on decision support and innovation
tool development will focus on the utility of the
EnviroAtlas and development of next-generation
tools and software to ensure sustainable
and healthy communities. The anticipated
accomplishments includethe public release of a
new EnviroAtlas section showing real-world use
cases that demonstrate how to apply Atlas data
to communities'common high priority decisions
with respect to maintaining or promoting good
environmental quality, environmental public
health and well-being, and community-level
preparation for adaptation to climate change.
In addition, climate change implication tools
and data layers will be incorporated into the
EnviroAtlas, allowing the users to visualize the
implications of climate change on community
sustainability, such as changes in water supply,
heat-related health impacts, and sea-level rise.
These accomplishments will allow users to
factor potential climate change impacts into
decisions affecting community sustainability
and community vulnerability. Finally, in addition
to advances for the EnviroAtlas, SHC anticipates
significant accomplishments in the development
of new decision-support tools, enhancements
to existing tools, and methods/components
for the delivery of both new and existing tools
that capitalize on existing reusable software
and advances in information technology to
ensure interoperability while filling gaps in
tools currently available to inform community
decisions that promote sustainability.
Community Weil-Being: Public Health and
Ecosystem Goods & Services
Anticipated accomplishments for this research
will provide a comprehensive source of
scientific indicators that describe the trends in
the nation's environmental and human health
condition and will be included in the draft
Report on the Environment (ROE) 2017. The
indicators help to answer important questions
about the current status and historical trends
in U.S. air, water, land, human health and
exposure, ecological systems, and sustainability
at the national and regional levels. Much of
the research in Community Well-Being will
provide research findings that incorporate the
impacts of social, economic and environmental
drivers, particularly climate change impacts,
on final ecosystem goods and services into
community-level decision-support tools and
the EnviroAtlas. In addition, research outputs
will integrate ecosystem goods and services,
human health, and human well-being research
results in order to assist communities and tribes
in holistic decision-making. These integrated
results that link human health and well-being
to environmental stressors and features of the
built and natural environment will improve our
ability to communicate strategies for educating
risk assessors, decision makers, and the public
on reducing childhood diseases and promoting
healthy and sustainable community settings.
Sustainable Approaches for Contaminated
Sites and Material Management
This topic area will continue the high level of
public health/environmental research and
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technical support to the program and regional
offices with afocus on methodsfor characterizing
and remediating contaminated ground water,
vapors, and sediments; tools for evaluating
temporal and spatial impacts of fuels/oils site
cleanup; and, tools for life cycle assessment
and sustainable materials management. These
accomplishments will provide an integrated
approach to evaluate and mitigate subsurface
contamination including contaminant fate and
transport, to improve draft sediment testing
methods for assessment of toxicity and to
assess practical approaches to characterize and
control vapor intrusion in buildings. Research
to determine the type, degree, and extent
of impacts of fuel and oils spills will provide
tools to communities and site managers to
better evaluate and predict the potential public
health impacts of fuels and oils and better
evaluate potential exposure to populations and
impacts to ecosystem services that will affect
human health and well-being. Anticipated
accomplishments in this area will also provide
tools to determine the temporal and spatial
impacts of managing materials on community
public health and their resources including:
impacts to community drinking water quality
and quantity from contaminated ground water;
impacts to indoor air in homes and schools
from contaminated ground water and soil gas
from materials management operations; and
impacts to land from management operations.
Integrated Solutions for Sustainable
Communities
Anticipated accomplishments for this research
will include a user-friendly interactive Web-
based sustainability toolbox that can be used
by community stakeholders to identify critical
information and analytical tools to help them
reach their sustainability goals. This toolbox,
the Community Sustainability Analysis System,
will facilitate planning that recasts waste as
materials, optimizes energy efficiency and
energy recovery, moves toward net zero water
usage, and promotes other steps toward
community sustainability. For the toolbox,
SHC will synthesize and evaluate sustainability
assessment and management methods
building on all previous SHC efforts (as well as
methods developed by others outside of EPA),
considering relevance, efficacy, and ease of use.
The synthesis will provide communities and
other decision makers with the best available
approaches for holistically evaluating common
decision options and identify the ones that best
foster community sustainability. Finally, the
nitrogen research accomplishments will provide
the framework, tools, and approaches to
holistically evaluate the implications of nitrogen
pollution and nitrogen management options
(regulatory and non-regulatory), especially in
the context of changing conditions, e.g., due to
climate change. This research will allow those
who affect or regulate nitrogen loading to make
decisions that will better capture the positive
benefits of nitrogen use, while preventing the
negative impacts on human health, well-being,
and ecosystems.
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Conclusions
The EPA FY 2014-2018 Strategic Plan posits
that the Agency's traditional approaches to
risk reduction and pollution control cannot
always fully address some long-term and broad
environmental quality and human health and
well-being issues. This is especially true at
the community level, where repercussions of
environmental problems, ranging from leaking
underground storage tanks to climate change-
exacerbated storms, are acutely felt, while
the capacity and authority to identify and
address causes vary widely. SHC's research has
embraced the challenge of providing knowledge
and tools that will help the variety of decision-
makers at all levels of governance sustain the
natural systems, well-being, and economies of
their communities.
SHC research and development efforts will
enable greater understanding of, for example,
the relationship of the built, natural, and social
environments to human health and well-being;
the production, supply, beneficiaries, and
valuation of ecosystem services; approaches to
recast waste as resources; and the processes and
remediation of contaminated sites and ground
water. SHC research will also provide ways to
measure and convey those relationships and
processes. Most importantly, SHC will develop
methods for using and communicating that
information in structured decision processes
that incorporate science and stakeholder
values.
Community sustainability is often defined
by the desire to meet today's needs without
compromising the quality of life of future
generations. SHC's program is designed to
advance community sustainability by providing
the science and tools to make informed choices
that avoid unintended consequences while
helping communities to seize opportunities to
enhance health and well-being for present and
future generations.
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Appendix 1
Summary Table of Anticipated Outputs
Project Area
Area-Specific Outputs
Topic 1: Decision-support and Innovation
Decision Science and
Support Tools
FY16 - Report on the design of software applications and decision
processes for different types of communities
FY17 - Methods to allow communities to calculate indicators and
indices of sustainability and well-being using local data
FY17 - Demonstration of interoperability with a system of databases
and tools integrating economic, environmental, and health and well-
being endpoints.
FY18 - Searchable library of available community decision-support tools
and modules; software to help users identify and use appropriate tools
for their needs
FY19 - Next generation decision-support tools that capitalize on
existing reusable software and advances in information technology to
ensure interoperability while filling gaps in tools currently available to
inform community decisions that promote sustainability.
EnviroAtlas: A
Geospatial Analysis
Tool
FY16 - Applications of EnviroAtlas to community-based decisions
FY17 - Crosswalk between ecosystem services mapped in the
EnviroAtlas with those in the final ecosystem goods and services (FEGS)
classification system
FY17 - Community metrics for EnviroAtlas
FY17 - Add data to EnviroAtlas to allow decision makers to understand
impacts of sea level rise, severe weather, precipitation, water supply,
and extreme heat on ecosystem goods and services
FY18 - Ecosystem services demand/benefit/beneficiaries data layers
for EnviroAtlas
Environmental
Workforce and
Innovation
FY16 - A synthesis of innovative ideas from the SBIR and P3 Programs
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Project Area
Area-Specific Outputs
Topic 2: Community Weil-Being: Public Health and Ecosystem Goods and Services
Community-Based
Ecosystem Goods and
Services
FY16 - Ecosystems goods and services production and benefit functions
case studies report
FY17 - Practical strategies for assessing final ecosystem goods and
services in community decision-making
FY18 - Provide information about the impacts of human actions and
environmental forces (particularly climate change) on final ecosystem
goods and services (PEGS) for incorporation into community-level
decision-support tools and the EnviroAtlas
Community Public
Health and Well-Being
FY16 - Demonstrations of applying tools, methods, and community
engagement mitigate environmental health impacts in at-risk
communities
FY16 - Methods for cumulative, integrated assessments of chemical
and non-chemical stressors and pilot application of these assessments
to reduce community environmental health risks and promote
community health and well-being
FY17 - Synthesis of best practices learned from community
participatory studies that address environmental health concerns within
communities
FY18 - A report on the state of the practice for integrating ecosystem
good and services, human health and human well-being research for
assisting communities in decision-making
FY19 - Enhanced community public health tools (e.g., C-FERST)
providing access to information for identifying, prioritizing, and
addressing environmental health issues in local decision-making
Assessing
Environmental
Health Disparities in
Vulnerable Groups
FY16 - Development of a systems-level approach to understanding
children's environmental exposure, health, and environmental diseases
in the natural and built environment
FY16 - Communication strategies for educating risk assessors, decision-
makers, and the public on reducing childhood diseases and promoting
healthy and sustainable community settings
FY19 -Translational research to incorporate data and information on
childrens' environmental health into tools to inform community actions
FY19 - Research to inform tribal sustainability decisions
FY19 - Evaluation of tested approaches to resolving health disparities in
vulnerable populations and lifestages.
Indicators, Indices,
and the Report on the
Environment
FY16 - Report on the State of the Practice for Environmental Indicators:
2012-2015
FY17 - Provide indicator information necessary for the incorporation of
environmental indicators into SHC decision-support tools
FY18 - Draft report on the Environment (ROE) -2018 with interpretation
of trends
FY19 - Report on the State of the Practice for Environmental Indicators:
2016-2018
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Project Area
Area-Specific Outputs
Topic 3: Sustainable Approaches for Contaminated Sites and Material Management
Contaminated Sites
FY16 - Methods for characterizing and remediating contaminated
ground water, vapor, and sediments sites, that have single or multiple
containments, to improve community public health and their resources
and facilitate revitalization
FY17 - Strategies for integrated assessment and remediation of
contaminated sites
FY17 - Tools for evaluating temporal and spatial impacts of
contaminated sites on public health and the environment, for use in site
remediation, restoration, and revitalization decisions
FY18 - Incremental report on lessons learned from ORD's Technical
Support to Superfund and other contaminated sites
Environmental
Releases of Oil and
Fuels
FY16 - Tools for improved characterization, response and remediation
of oil and fuels to improve emergency response and other clean-up
activities
FY17 - Tools for evaluating temporal and spatial impacts of fuels/
oils site cleanup on public health and the environment, for use in site
remediation, restoration, and revitalization
Sustainable
Management
of Materials to
Support Community
Sustainability
FY17 - Sustainable materials management options for industrial,
construction/demolition, and municipal materials including reduction,
reuse, and recycling/repurposing to protect community public health
and the environment
FY18 - Strategy for sustainable materials management
FY18 - Tools for evaluating temporal and spatial impacts of materials
management on public health and the environment, for use in
restoration and revitalization decision-making
Topic 4: Integrated Solutions for Sustainable Communities
Integrated Solutions
for Sustainable
Communities
FY18 - Sector-based information and decision tools (including
sustainability assessment) for pursuing community sustainability in
land use, transportation, buildings and infrastructure, and waste and
materials management sectors
FY19 - Tools to inform regulatory and non-regulatory solutions to
nitrogen pollution through the consideration of impacts/effects on
ecosystem services
FY19 - Expanded Community Sustainability Analysis System (CSAS)
Web-based information portal
FY19 - Approaches for integrated sustainability assessment and
management to proactively inform community decisions and advance
sustainability
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Appendix 2
Figures enlarged to show detail
Figure 1. The nested relationships of a resilient economy existing within a healthy society dependent on
an intact, functional environment illustrates the holistic definition of sustainability that recognizes the
hard constraints imposed by environmental limitations.
Robust and Resilient Economy nests within Human Health and Well-
being, which in turn nests within Environmental Integrity.
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The Ceiling of Environmental Protection
Traditional approaches have set a "high floor"
Systems approach necessary for sustainable environmental, economic and social
outcomes
SHC research will develop science-based tools, data, and information to
support sustainable regulatory and non-regulatory approaches
The Floor of Environmental Protection
CAA The 70's and 80's SDWA
Command and TSCA
ZT C°ntrol T HRU
CERCLA I MPRSA
FFDCA
Figure 2. How does EPA build on its strong foundation of command & control regulation, enforcement, and focused
remediation to fully achieve long-term and broad goals for sustainable environmental quality and human health and
well-being?
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Sustainable & Healthy Communities Research Program
Community-Baset
Human Health
Remediation/Restoration
of Contaminated Sites;
Materials Management
Ecosystem Services
Transdisciplinary Integration
Understanding Causal Relationships Between
Human Health, Ecosystems and Well-being
Databases, Tools, Models, Interoperability, and Assessments
SYSTEMS APPROACH to ACHIEVING SUSTAIN ABILITY
Total Resource Impacts & Outcomes (TRIO) Applied to Decisions
Affecting Communities
Figure 3. Roots of the SHC research and development program and redirection of separate human health,
contaminated sites, and ecosystem services approach toward integrated approaches for environmental
assessment and management.
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Sustainability Assessment & Management for Integrated Solutions
r\
Short and Long-term g ^^
Impacts and Outcomes
Adaptive
Management/
Process
Improvement
Decision to be Made
Integrity
Human Health and
Well-being
Robust and
Resilient
Economy
Screening: Is
Sustainability
Assessment
needed?
Evaluation of
Outcomes
Performance
Metrics
Trends
Analysis
Indicators &
Indices
Stakeholder
Engagement
Monitoring/Evaluation
of Outcomes
Decision Made
Result to
Stakeholde
Prevention/Mitigation
Strategies
Net Benefits/Risk
Next Generation Tools
Spatial Visualization
Integrated
Assessment
and
Management
Improved
Communication
Management
Alternatives
Forecasting & Conceptual
Models
Structured Decision Making
Remediation Current Conditions &
Options Context
Sustainability
Assessment:
Implications of Decisions
Systems Dynamics Models
Valuation of Ecosystem
Services
Life Cycle Assessment
Valuation of Ecosystem
Services
Forecasting Models
Spatial Visualization Life ^^ Assessment
Health Disparity Assessment Sector-based Impact
Data, Metrics, Indicators Assessments
Cumulative Risk
Figure 4. Sustainability assessment and management cycle for integrated solutions. Adapted from Figure 4-1 in the MAS
"Green Book," SHC proposes to use this cycle in case studies to support community decisions and to identify how and where in this
cycle ORD and EPA research, data, models, tools, and experience can best be used for decision support.
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Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER)
Policy Analysis & Regulatory Management
Office of Superfund Remediation & Technical Innovation
Office of Resource Conservation & Recovery
Office of Underground Storage Tanks
Office of Emergency Management
Office of Brownfields & Land Revitalization
Federal Facilities Restoration & Reuse
SHC
Office of Water (OW)
Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water
Office of Science and Technology
Office of Wastewater Management
Office of Wetlands, Oceans, and Watersheds
Office of Children's Health Protection (OCHP)
Office of International & Tribal Affairs (OITA)
Office of Policy (OP)
Office of Sustainable Communities
National Center for Environmental Economics
Office of Air and Radiation (OAR)
Office of Air Quality Planning & Standards
Office of Transportation & Air Quality
Office of Radiaiton & Indoor Air
Office of Atmospheric Programs
EPA Regional Offices (R1-R10)
Figure 5. SHC agency partners.
SHC engages EPA's statutorily derived program offices, all 10 regional offices, and other program offices.
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Drivers
President's Executive Orders
Children's Environmental Health
Environmental Justice
Environmental, Energy, and Economic
Performance
Impacts of Climate Change
National Environmental Policy Act
1969
Comprehensive Environmental
Response, Compensation and Liability
Act (Superfund) 1980
SARA 1986
"Brownfields Law" 2002
Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act 1976,1986
Hazardous and Solid Waste
Amendments 1984
Oil Pollution Act 1990
Clean Air Act 1970
Clean Water Act 1977
Research and Development to Support
Sustainability
Toolbox of simple to complex tools that identify
holistic decision implications
New methods to quantify net risk/benefits and to
identify non-independence of actions
Systems-based assessment approaches that facilitate
optimization of outcomes
Sustainability indicators
Vulnerable Assessment and Remediation of Contaminated
Sites and Oil Spills, Brownfields
Contaminated sediments, groundwater, vapor intrusion
Underground storage tanks, pipelines, dispersants,
National Contingency Plan, Deep Water Horizon
follow-up
Remediation to Restoration to Revitalization
Sustainable Materials Management
Expanded life-cycle analysis, beneficial use of industrial wastes
Renewable energy from organic wastes, re-use of construction
and demolition debris
Health & Weil-Being, Environmental Quality
Integrated nitrogen and 2° NAAQS, TMDL and non-point
source pollution
Ecosystems services classification and valuation
Integrated eco-health analysis (influence of the built and
natural environment on health and well-being)
Expanded HIA methods and supporting tools guidance
Tribal-focused indicators and assessment techniques
Cumulative assessment, including chemical and non-
chemical stressors, vulnerable lifestages, and overburdened
communities
Community-focused risk management guidance
Figure 6. Sustainable and Healthy Communities research program is responsive to EPAs
authorizing legislation and Executive Orders (left). Examples to the right illustrate the scope of
SHC activities with respect to these drivers (SARA: Superfund Amendment Reauthorization Act;
HIA: Health Impact Assessment; NAAQS: National Ambient Air Quality Standards; TMDL: Total
Maximum Daily Load).
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1. University of Washington - Seattle, WA 4. UC San Francisco - San Francisco, CA 9. Johns Hopkins University - Baltimore, MD
2. UC Davis - Davis, CA 5. National Jewish Health - Denver, CO 10. Columbia University - New York, NY
3. UC Berkeley/Metayer - Berkeley, CA 6. University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign, IL 11. Brown University - Providence, Rl
3. UC Berkeley/Eskenazi - Berkeley, CA 1. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ml 12. Dartmouth College - Hanover, NH
3. UC Berkeley/Tager - Berkeley, CA 8. Duke University - Durham, NC
Figure 7. EPA/NIEHS Children's Centers Program.
EPA and NIEHS jointly fund Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research
Centers that were established to explore ways to reduce children's health risks from environmental
factors. Since 1998, EPA has contributed about $150 million, and NIEHS has contributed similarly.
Currently, we fund 14 Centers (see map) together. The goals of these Centers are to understand how
environmental exposures and social factors affect children's health and to design interventions and
prevention techniques to improve health and well-being. Many of the Centers use community-based
participatory methods to partner with communities throughout the research process to develop shared
decision making and ownership. Using these approaches, the Centers are evaluating environmental
exposures from air pollutants and endocrine disrupting chemicals, for example, and health outcomes
such as asthma, autism, adverse birth outcomes.
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United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
PRESORTED STANDARD
POSTAGES FEES PAID
EPA
PERMIT NO. G-35
Office of Research and Development (8101R)
Washington, DC 20460
Official Business
Penalty for Private Use
$300
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