Decision Support
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.
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 |