COMMITTEE ON EPA 542-R-01-002 THE CHALLENGES OF January 2001 MODERN SOCIETY www.clu-in.org www.nato.int/ccms NATO/CCMS Pilot Study Evaluation of Demonstrated and Emerging Technologies for the Treatment of Contaminated Land and Groundwater (Phase III) 2000 SPECIAL SESSION Decision Support Tools Number 245 NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION NATO/CCMS Pilot Study Evaluation of Demonstrated and Emerging Technologies for the Treatment and Clean Up of Contaminated Land and Groundwater (Phase III) SPECIAL SESSION ON Decision Support Tools Wiesbaden June 26-30, 2000 January 2001 NOTICE This report was prepared under the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization s Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (NATO/CCMS) as a service to the technical community by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). The report was funded by U.S. EPA s Technology Innovation Office. The report was produced by Environmental Management Support, Inc., of Silver Spring, Maryland, under U.S. EPA contract 68-W-00-084. Mention of trade names or specific applications does not imply endorsement or acceptance by U.S. EPA. Decision Support Tools NATO/CCMS Pilot Project Phase III CONTENTS Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 3 Opening Comments......................................................................................................................... 5 Framework for Decision Support Used in Contaminated Land Management in Europe and North America................................................................................................................................. 9 Geospatial Decision Frameworks for Remedial Design and Secondary Sampling ...................... 31 Decision Support Tools: Applications in Remediation Technology Evaluation and Selection.... 42 Common Factors in Decision Making and Their Implications For Decision Support for Contaminated Land in a Multiobjective Setting ........................................................................... 58 Case Study: Cost Benefit Analysis/Multi-Criteria Analyses for a Remediation Project .............. 69 Modelling the Financial Risks of Remediation............................................................................. 83 Decision Support Using Life Cycle Assessment in Soil Remediation Planning .......................... 92 Approaches to Decision Support in the Context of Sustainable Development........................... 100 Summary and Conclusions.......................................................................................................... 113 Country Representatives ............................................................................................................. 125 Attendees List.............................................................................................................................. 128 i Decision Support Tools NATO/CCMS Pilot Project Phase III INTRODUCTION The Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established the Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) in 1969. CCMS was charged with developing meaningful programs to share information among countries on environmental and societal issues that complement other international endeavors and to provide leadership in solving specific problems of the human environment. A fundamental precept of CCMS involves the transfer of technological and scientific solutions among nations with similar environmental challenges. The management of contaminated land and groundwater is a universal problem among industrialized countries, requiring the use of existing, emerging, innovative, and cost-effective technologies. This document summarizes the special session on decision support systems from the third meeting of the Phase III Pilot Study on the Evaluation of Demonstrated and Emerging Technologies for the Treatment and Clean Up of Contaminated Land and Groundwater. The United States is the lead country for the Pilot Study, and Germany and The Netherlands are the Co-Pilot countries. The first phase of the pilot study was successfully concluded in 1991, and the results were published in three volumes. The second phase, which expanded to include newly emerging technologies, was concluded in 1997. Final reports documenting 52 completed projects and the participation of 14 countries were published in June 1998. Through this pilot study, critical technical information is made available to participating countries and the world community. The Phase III study focuses on the technical approaches for treating contaminated land and groundwater. This includes issues of sustainability, environmental merit, and cost-effectiveness, in addition to continued emphasis on emerging remediation technologies. The objectives of the study are to critically evaluate technologies, promote the appropriate use of technologies, use information technology systems to disseminate the products, and to foster innovative thinking in the area of contaminated land. The first meeting of the Phase III study was held in Vienna, Austria, on February 23-27, 1998. The meeting included a special technical session on treatment walls and permeable reactive barriers. The proceedings of the meeting and of the special technical session were published in May 1998. The second meeting of the Phase III Pilot Study convened in Angers, France, on May 9-14, 1999, with representatives of 18 countries attending. A special technical session on monitored natural attenuation was held. This report and the general proceedings of the 1999 annual meeting were published in October 1999. This third meeting was held in Wiesbaden, Germany from June 26-30, 2000. The special technical focused on decision support tools. This publication is the report from the special session on decision support tools. This session was chaired by Dr. Paul Bardos from r3 environmental technology Ltd (UK) and Dr. Terry Sullivan from Brookhaven National Laboratory (US). This and many of the Pilot Study reports are available online at http://www.nato.int/ccms/. General information on the NATO/CCMS Pilot Study may be obtained from the country representatives listed at the end of the report. Further information on the presentations in this decision support tools report should be obtained from the individual authors. Stephen C. James Walter W. Kovalick, Jr., Ph.D. Co-Directors 1 Decision Support Tools NATO/CCMS Pilot Project Phase III THIS PAGE IS INTENTIONALLY BLANK 2 Decision Support Tools NATO/CCMS Pilot Project Phase III EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Environmental management of contaminated lands is a complex process requiring a wide variety of decisions encompassing different technical, social, and political questions. Decision support for contaminated land management is an emerging field. Decision support involves integration of expertise and data, followed by analysis and interpretation of the results to produce outcomes in terms of decision variables (health risk, cost, suitability, etc.). The decision support can be in the form of guidance that provides a framework for performing the analysis or software that has codified the expertise to allow more rapid analysis by many. The magnitude and similarity between contaminated land management problems has led to development of several decision support tools (DSTs) to address different aspects of the problem (site characterization, cost-benefit, risks, sustainable development, etc.). Four major categories of DST use were identified during the special session discussions: • Written guidance produced, for example, by regulatory bodies, • Identifying sites on a regional or organizational (e.g., corporate) basis and setting management/ policy goals, • Prioritization among different sites within a single area of responsibility, • Using DST for specific tasks at a single site. Examples of these approaches include analysis of human health risks, remedy selection, site characterization, and cost-benefit analysis. In most applications, a single decision criterion is evaluated. However, use of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) and life cycle analysis (LCA) approaches are often found. The session had a series of invited talks on different aspects of decision support including implementation of decision support tools. This report contains the following papers: • Framework for decision support used in contaminated land management in Europe and North America • Geospatial decision frameworks for remedial design and secondary sampling • Decision support tools: applications in remediation technology evaluation and selection • Common factors in decision-making and their implications for decision support for contaminated land in a multi-objective setting • Case Study - Cost benefit analysis/multi-criteria analyses for a remediation project • Modelling of financial risks of remediation • Decision support using Life Cycle Assessment in Soil Remediation Planning • Approaches to decsion support in the context of sustainable development • Managing environmental data In addition, two guided discussion sessions were conducted and one set of written questions was prepared and distributed to the conference participants. Responses from the questions were analyzed and the results were reported at the meeting. The discussion sections focused on obtaining information on the uses