Land and Waste Management

Cleaning up contaminated sites, protecting ground water from pollutants, and managing waste and materials are objectives of EPA’s land and waste management practices. Using state-of-the-science knowledge, EPA exposure researchers are developing software systems to promote best practices and standards for integrated environmental modeling. Additionally, researchers are developing and refining methods for managing stormwater in an effort to reduce environmental impacts of runoff-associated pollutants.

Green Infrastructure

To reduce environmental impacts and costs of managing stormwater, which can carry road pollutants, urban communities are increasingly installing green infrastructure that utilizes engineering techniques that mimic nature. EPA researchers are working to evaluate how different green infrastructure facilities, such as open forest spaces, rain gardens, porous pavements, cisterns, and grassy swales, control runoff-associated pollutants at the source.

Software System Interoperability

EPA scientists are conducting research to establish and promote best practices and standards for increasing software reuse and interoperability for integrated and environmental modeling. Researchers are currently working to document state-of-the-art practices in software development. Researchers are also developing proof-of-principle projects to demonstrate interoperability; and establishing best practices and standards for incorporation of interoperability and reuse in software development.

Safe, Sustainable Practices to Beneficially Reuse Materials and Wastes

EPA scientists are analyzing potential pollutant exposures from industrial waste by assessing human and ecosystem exposure during their treatment, storage and disposal, and also when these materials are reused in products. Using complex mathematical modeling systems, the scientists are studying the transport of potentially hazardous pollutants during their lifecycle to soil, water and air to assess how industrial byproduct reuse affects human and ecological exposure.

Data for Environmental Modeling (D4EM)

Data for environmental modeling, or D4EM, is a comprehensive set of tools that obtains and processes environmental data for mathematical models. D4EM is a programming library with a component-based architecture that can be integrated with other modeling applications. Programmers can use D4EM to perform data management and processing tasks inside a specialized application. The user interacts with data through a customized MapWindow GIS user interface for obtaining and manipulating data, validating data for completeness, and generating model-specific data files.