Decision Support

Managing waste resulting from disasters can be a complicated and resource intensive process, especially during large-scale incidents such as the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant accident or severe hurricanes. For these large-scale incidents, there is a need for tools to assist state, local, tribal and territorial governments and federal decision makers on waste management in the pre-planning, mitigation, response, and recovery phase of an incident. Current tools that support estimation of waste types and volumes, disposal facility identification, and temporary storage of waste are found in the following table.

EPA Decision Support Tools for Environmental Incidents and Natural Disasters
Tool Name	All Hazards Waste Management Planning (WMP) Tool	Disaster Debris Recovery Tool	Incident Waste Decision Support Tool v6.5	Waste Estimation Support Tool	Waste Storage and Staging Tool	Waste Logistics Tool	Decon ST	Hot Spot Calculator	Waste Reduction Model	Rad Decontamination Query Tool
Acronym and link	WMP	EPA DDRT	EPA I-WASTE Tool	WEST	N/A	N/A	Decon ST	Hot Spot Calculator	WARM	RDQT
Availability	Available	Available	Available with permission	Available	Available early FY20	Available early FY21	Available by request contact ryan.shawn@epa.gov	Available	Available	Available
Purpose	To assist emergency managers and planners in the public and private sectors in creating or updating a comprehensive plan for managing waste generated from manmade and natural disasters.	To promote the safe and sustainable recovery from natural disasters by providing infomration on debris disposal facilities	To provide information for planning how to handle, transport, treat, and dispose of contaminated waste and debris. I-Waste includes a waste volume calculator.	To aid in estimating waste generated from remediation and cleanup activities following a radiological or biological incident.	To guide the identification and prioritization of locations of staging and storing waste.	To identify optimal routes for transporting large volumes of waste from a disaster stricken area to waste management facilities.	To prioritize building decontamination technlogies for chemical and biological contaminants as a function of waste generation, cost, and effectiveness.	To evaluate decontamination technologies and the associated resource demand required to remediate contaminated sites. The tool uses gamma-ray imaging technology to determine the magnitude of contamination so that the ability of various decontamination methods to mitigate the contamination can be modeled.	To calculate greenhouse gas emissions from various waste management practices including source reduction, recycling, combustion, composting. Decision makers can consider emissions in evaluating waste disposal options.	Provides users with access to information contained in published technology evaluation reports. The information provided is the result of numerous studies on the removal of selected radionuclides from building materials.
Applicable Event Phases and Scenarios	Pre-incident planning	Pre-incident planning, and disaster debris removal during incident	Pre-incident planning, and disaster debris removal	Pre-incident planning and stratetic planning for decon and waste management.	Pre-incident planning and during response/recovery	Pre-incident planning and during response/recovery	Pre-incident planning and during response/recovery	Response/recovery -- applicable to industry	Planning for waste disposal and post decision tracking of greenhouse gas emissions.	Pre-incident planning and during response/recovery
Applicable Hazard Class	Chemical, biological radiological	natural disasters	Chemical, biological, radiological contamination and natural disasters	Biological and radiological. Chemicals may be added.	Chemical, biological and radiological	All hazard	Chemical, biological.	Radiological	Solid waste	Radiological
Expertise Needed to Operate the Tool	None	None	None	Minimal GIS expertise	Minimal GIS expertise	Minimal GIS expertise	None	None	None	None
Target Users	Emergency Managers and Planners	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making disposal decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making disposal decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making disposal decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making waste management decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making disposal decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making decisions on decontaminating structures	Emergency planners, environmental unit leaders, TWGs, waste management facilities, OSCs, industrial engineers	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making disposal decisions	Planners, emergency responders, and other individuals responsible for making decisions on decontaminating structures
Platform the tool is Developed on?		GeoPlatform/ArcGIS	Moving to MySQL	ArcGIS/MS Access	ArcGIS/Python	ArcGIS/Python	MS Excel	MS Excel	openLCA and Excel