UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY 

 WASHINGTON D.C. 20460 

 

OFFICE OF THE ADMINISTRATOR 

 SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD 

October 24, 2008 

 

EPA-SAB-09-002 

The Honorable Stephen L. Johnson 

Administrator 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20460 

Subject: SAB Advisory Report "Preparing for Environmental Disasters" 

Dear Administrator Johnson: 

I am pleased to send to you a self-initiated Advisory Report of the EPA Science 

Advisory Board (SAB) titled "Preparing for Environmental Disasters." Our primary 

motivation in this effort has been to help the Agency become less reactive and more 

anticipatory and to think more broadly about how it identifies and assesses possible future 

large-scale environmental disasters and develops plans for responding to and 

communicating about them. 

EPA's statutory responsibilities in such settings are limited, and in the context of an 

environmental disaster, "that's not my department" is not a satisfactory answer to a 

concerned general public that will look at the Agency's name and expect it to take a wider 

range of responsibilities than it is likely to actually have. The public may not understand, 

or in the face of a major environmental disaster care very much, about the intricacies of 

bureaucratic or political constraints. Thus, they may blame EPA for the shortcomings of 

others. 

It is very much in the Agency's interest to assure that preparations for possible 

future disasters have been well developed and that there are not gaps in responsibility or 

response. While it is clear that the Agency has already undertaken extensive preparations 

to deal with a range of specific environmental disasters, we also recommend that EPA also 

invest modest additional resources in some broader efforts. 

To this end the SAB recommends that the EPA establish a small interdisciplinary 

Environmental Disaster Assessment Team of five to seven professionals who are charged 

with identifying, prioritizing and assessing potential environmental disasters. This team 

should develop a system to identify potential environmental disasters, prioritize them 

based on probability and consequence, and identify common attributes and response 

strategies that could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency responses. 
2

In addition, the proposed Environmental Disaster Assessment Team should 

perform, or arrange for others to perform, reasonably comprehensive assessments of those 

disasters deemed to be of greatest concern. It should then help and advise the Agency to 

fully: 1) identify gaps in coverage by Federal, State and Local authorities and needs for 

improved coverage, coordination and preplanning; 2) develop prior arrangements with 

experts and organizations who can provided the needed knowledge and skills and develop 

a geo-coded list of this expertise so that these connections can be made rapidly in an 

emergency; and 3) identify short term waivers to regulations that might be needed and 

prearranged mechanisms to achieve these waivers in a way that balances efficiency with 

protection and other objectives.

In undertaking this self-initiated study, one of the first steps the SAB took was to 

invite a set of briefings from a range of organizations that have extensive experience in 

dealing with a wide variety of environmental disasters. We did this because we wanted to 

see if there were general lessons to be drawn that might be relevant to the EPA's needs, and 

because we wanted to get ourselves "grounded" in examples of a number of real events so 

that our deliberations would not be too abstract. 

From these examples we concluded that the Agency would be well advised to more 

systematically examine and seek to learn from the best practices of other public and private 

organizations. In so doing, it should seek strategies by which it, and other responsible 

parties, might better: 

1) anticipate, assess, plan for, and practice responses to deal with major events 

that plausibly might occur in coming years; 

2) learn rapidly what is going on and developing a rapid and rough sense of what 

risks may exist to people and the environment; 

3) effectively coordinate and communicate with other key players including first 

responders and the public; 

4) respond with flexibility to the specific needs and circumstances of the event at 

hand, including the ability to adapt procedures and make real-time decisions 

when previous plans are not working; 

5) delegate decision authority to responsible individuals in the field; and 

6) mobilize personnel and resources in a rapid and orderly way. 

Beyond these general recommendations the report makes a number of more specific 

recommendations, many of which should help to improve EPA’s capacity in the 

emergency response program. 

The SAB recommends that the EPA compile an inventory of existing models, tools, 

data and resources, including those that, while developed for other purposes, might be 

made useful for disaster response; perform a comprehensive assessment and develop a 

report on the gaps in the available resource systems; solicit feedback from users of these 

tools, particularly local and state personnel and regional EPA managers, regarding resource 

systems; and identify further development and research needs. 

The SAB recognizes that field measurements made during the early stages of a 

disaster have a different purpose than field measurements made for long-term monitoring 

and remediation. Emergency responders and citizens need fast order-of-magnitude 
3

indications of the nature and level of hazards they may face. Accordingly instrumentation, 

quality assurance procedures for authorizing the release of data, and measurement 

priorities should be designed to appropriately meet those needs. While recognizing the 

progress that has been made in the development of the Environmental Response 

Laboratory Network, the report recommends that the agency pay additional attention to 

developing procedures for rapid field measurement, data analysis and data release during 

the early stages of emergencies, as well as protocols for how those procedures will be 

modified to assure greater precision and quality control as needed in later stages of the lifecycle of an environmental disaster. 

The report makes a variety of other more specific recommendations related to tools 

for data display and analysis, documentation of decisions, routine post-hoc performance 

audits, and improving communication. 

In this latter context, the report notes that virtually all of the Agency's work in 

communication with the general public lacks a key empirical foundation. To correct this 

deficiency, the SAB recommends that the Agency reinvigorate its program in behavioral 

social science application and research, perhaps by reestablishing the very successful 

collaboration it once had with National Science Foundation’s Decision Research and 

Management Science program. This should include a strong program in empirically based 

methods of risk communication as well as development, demonstration and evaluation of 

mechanisms for better including public values and preferences in post-disaster clean-up 

decisions. 

Clearly the SAB is not the right organization to develop detailed operational plans to 

deal with environmental disasters. Rather, it is our hope that by taking a fresh independent 

look, this report may persuade the Agency to begin to add to its current activities the kind 

of broader, more anticipatory approach we believe is needed. 

In the future, once the agency has developed a broader planning process and plans, 

the SAB would be happy to provide thoughtful expert reviews and advice on the technical 

and behavioral dimensions of those processes and plans. 

 Sincerely, 

 

 /Signed/ 

 

 Dr. M. Granger Morgan 

 Chair 

 U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board 

 
i

NOTICE 

This report has been written as part of the activities of the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB), a 

public advisory group providing extramural scientific information and advice to the Administrator 

and other officials of the Environmental Protection Agency. The SAB is structured to provide 

balanced, expert assessment of scientific matters related to problems facing the Agency. This 

report has not been reviewed for approval by the Agency and, hence, the contents of this report do 

not necessarily represent the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor of 

other agencies in the Executive Branch of the Federal government, nor does mention of trade 

names of commercial products constitute a recommendation for use. Reports of the SAB are 

posted on the EPA website at http://www.epa.gov/sab. 
ii

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

Science Advisory Board* 

CHAIR 

Dr. M. Granger Morgan, Lord Chair Professor in Engineering, Department of 

Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 

SAB MEMBERS 

Dr. Gregory Biddinger, Coordinator, Natural Land Management Programs, Toxicology 

and Environmental Sciences, ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc., Houston, TX 

Dr. Thomas Burke, Professor, Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns 

Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 

Dr. James Bus, Director of External Technology, Toxicology and Environmental 

Research and Consulting, The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, MI 

Dr. Deborah Cory-Slechta, Professor, Department of Environmental Medicine, School of 

Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 

Dr. Maureen L. Cropper, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Maryland, 

College Park, MD 

Dr. Virginia Dale, Corporate Fellow, Environmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge 

National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 

Dr. Kenneth Dickson, Regents Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, University 

of North Texas, Aubrey, TX 

Dr. David A. Dzombak, Walter J. Blenko Sr. Professor of Environmental Engineering, 

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, Carnegie 

Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 

Dr. Baruch Fischhoff, Howard Heinz University Professor, Department of Social and 

Decision Sciences, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon 

University, Pittsburgh, PA 

Dr. James Galloway, Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of 

Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 

Dr. James K. Hammitt, Professor, Center for Risk Analysis, Harvard University, Boston, 

MA 

 __________ 

 *This roster reflects the SAB membership during 2007 and 2008 when the activity was 

conducted. 
iii

Dr. Rogene Henderson, Senior Scientist Emeritus, Lovelace Respiratory Research 

Institute, Albuquerque, NM 

Dr. James H. Johnson, Professor and Dean, College of Engineering, Architecture & 

Computer Sciences, Howard University, Washington, DC 

Dr. Bernd Kahn, Professor Emeritus and Director, Environmental Radiation Center, 

Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Program, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, 

GA 

Dr. Agnes Kane, Professor and Chair, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, 

Brown University, Providence, RI 

Dr. Meryl Karol, Professor Emerita, Graduate School of Public Health, University of 

Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 

Dr. Catherine Kling, Professor, Department of Economics, Iowa State University, Ames, 

IA 

Dr. George Lambert, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Director, Center for Childhood 

Neurotoxicology, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School-UMDNJ, Belle Mead, NJ 

Dr. Jill Lipoti, Director, Division of Environmental Safety and Health, New Jersey 

Department of Environmental Protection, Trenton, NJ 

Dr. Michael J. McFarland, Associate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental 

Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, UT 

Dr. Judith L. Meyer, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia, 

Lopez Island, WA 

Dr. Jana Milford, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 

University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 

Dr. Rebecca Parkin, Professor and Associate Dean, Environmental and Occupational 

Health, School of Public Health and Health Services, The George Washington University 

Medical Center, Washington, DC 

Mr. David Rejeski, Director, Foresight and Governance Project, Woodrow Wilson 

International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC 

Dr. Stephen M. Roberts, Professor, Department of Physiological Sciences, Director, 

Center for Environmental and Human Toxicology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 

Dr. Joan B. Rose, Professor and Homer Nowlin Chair for Water Research, Department of 

Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 
iv

Dr. James Sanders, Director and Professor, Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, 

Savannah, GA 

Dr. Jerald Schnoor, Allen S. Henry Chair Professor, Department of Civil and 

Environmental Engineering, Co-Director, Center for Global and Regional Environmental 

Research, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 

Dr. Kathleen Segerson, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Connecticut, 

Storrs, CT 

Dr. Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O'Neil Professor of Philosophy, Department of Biological 

Sciences and Philosophy Department, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 

Dr. V. Kerry Smith, W.P. Carey Professor of Economics , Department of Economics , 

W.P Carey School of Business , Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 

Dr. Deborah Swackhamer, Interim Director and Professor, Institute on the Environment, 

University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 

Dr. Thomas L. Theis, Director, Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, 

University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 

Dr. Valerie Thomas, Anderson Interface Associate Professor, School of Industrial and 

Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 

Dr. Barton H. (Buzz) Thompson, Jr., Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources 

Law at the Stanford Law School and Director, Woods Institute for the Environment 

Director, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 

Dr. Robert Twiss, Professor Emeritus, University of California-Berkeley, Ross, CA 

Dr. Lauren Zeise, Chief, Reproductive and Cancer Hazard Assessment Branch, Office of 

Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Environmental Protection Agency, 

Oakland, CA 

LIAISONS 

Dr. Steven Heeringa, (FIFRA SAP), Research Scientist and Director, Statistical Design Group, 

Institute for Social Research (ISR), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 

Dr. Melanie Marty, (CHPAC Chair), Chief, Air Toxicology and Epidemiology Branch, Office of 

Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California EPA, Oakland, CA 

 

SCIENCE ADVISORY BOARD STAFF 

Mr. Thomas Miller, Designated Federal Officer, EPA SAB, Washington, DC 
v

Table of Contents 

SAB Advisory Report: Preparing for Environmental Disasters 

 

1. Background.......................................................................................................................1 

2. Learning from Others......................................................................................................2 

3. Identifying a Range of Potential Environmental Disasters..........................................4 

4. Geographically Specific Tools for Data Display, Analysis and Decision Support .....7 

5. QA/QC for Data During Emergencies.........................................................................11 

6. Improved Communication and Public Consultation..................................................11 

7. Summary and Restatement of Key Recommendations..............................................14 
1

SAB Advisory Report: Preparing for Environmental Disasters 

1. Background 

Even with improved preparation and careful advanced preventive actions, 

occasional environmental disasters are inevitable. They will arise from natural events, 

such as storms, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions that have significant human and 

environmental impacts (SAB, 1995, 1999). Unfortunately they may also result from 

accidental or intentional human events, such as large spills, structural collapse, facility 

explosions or terrorist attacks. 

When disasters with large environmental consequences occur, the public naturally 

looks to EPA to play a central role in characterizing environmental impacts, protecting 

human health and ecosystems, and in coordinating and overseeing post disaster clean-up. 

However, EPA's authority covers only a subset of the issues that may arise in an 

environmental disaster (See Box 1, Appendix A). These include protection of drinking 

water supplies, the cleanup of contaminated buildings, and the development of a 

nationwide laboratory network to support response. EPA has developed an Emergency 

Response Business Plan1

 and continues to work hard to prepare for those aspects of 

disasters for which it has responsibility, following the general framework laid out in the 

National Response Framework (see Figure 1, Appendix A) 

Other federal, state, and local agencies have primary responsibility for other aspects 

of dealing with environmental disasters, including First Response. When the scale of a 

disaster is large, or especially politically salient, senior political leaders also become 

involved. In such situations, EPA has found itself buffeted by forces over which it has 

little or no control or authority. At the same time, the public may not understand, or in the 

face of a disaster care very much, about the intricacies of bureaucratic or political 

constraints and blame EPA for the shortcomings of others. 

While no one can predict the future, we believe that it should be possible to 

identify, at least in general terms, the range of large-scale environmental disasters that 

could plausibly arise from natural causes (earthquakes, hurricanes), accidents (accidental 

explosions, structural collapse) and terrorist events. The EPA has already done some of 

this, partly in response to previous SAB investigations and recommendations (SAB, 1995, 

1999). However, in crisis situations large organizations are rarely capable of rapid 

innovation. Rather, they respond with previously developed "standard operating 

procedures" (Allison and Zelikow, 1999). As a result, if EPA is to improve its response to 

future large-scale environmental disasters it must have performed needed research and 

developed plans in anticipation of the range of plausible contingencies. At least as 

important, Agency personnel must have practiced and refined these plans in "table-top" or 

 

1

The Emergency Response Business Plan is designed to facilitate readiness to deal with five simultaneous 

incidents of national significance (INS) while also maintaining effective "day-to-day" capabilities. 
2

other exercises that address both the risks and the likely complex institutional setting in 

which the Agency will likely have to execute its plans. The agency has already been doing 

these things for those aspects of a number of potential environmental disasters for which it 

has statutory authority. This report recommends that the Agency expand the range of those 

activities and invest modest resources in some broader efforts to scope and prioritize 

potential disasters with large environmental consequences. Indeed, if it does this well, 

EPA may even be able to assist other government and private sector entities to identify 

gaps and blind spots in their current thinking and improve their current preparation and 

response plans. 

The purpose of this SAB self-initiated study has been to stimulate the agency to 

become less reactive and more anticipatory and to think more broadly about how it 

identifies and assesses possible future large-scale environmental disasters and develops 

plans for responding to and communicating about them. Clearly, the SAB is not the right 

organization to develop detailed operational plans. Rather, it is our hope that by taking a 

fresh independent look at the problem, and building on previous SAB efforts on the topic 

of preparedness for environmental disasters (SAB, 1995, 1999) we can persuade the 

Agency to begin to adopt the kind of broader, more anticipatory approach we believe is 

needed. In the future, once the agency has developed a broader planning process and 

plans, the Science Advisory Board would be happy to provide thoughtful expert reviews 

and advice on the technical and behavioral dimensions of those processes and plans. 

The Board would like to recognize and thank Agency staff for its insights, critical 

commentary, and assistance in this effort. 

2. Learning from Others 

In undertaking this self-initiated study, one of the first steps the SAB took was to 

invite a set of briefings from a range of organizations that have extensive experience in 

dealing with a wide variety of environmental disasters. This was done for two reasons: a) 

because the SAB wanted to see if there were general lessons to be drawn that might be 

relevant to the EPA's needs; and, b) because the SAB wanted to get itself "grounded" in 

examples of a number of real events so that our deliberations would not be too abstract. 

People who graciously shared their time and experiences in disaster prevention and 

management with the SAB over the course of the study are listed in Appendix B to this 

report. In reviewing the most successful of the efforts the SAB identified a number of 

themes and approaches that it believes will likely be common to any effort to deal 

effectively with environmental disasters. These include: 

 

1) Anticipating, assessing, planning and practicing to deal with events that can 

reasonably be anticipated to occur. When this is done, previously developed 

operational and communication plans, trained personnel, and previously identified 

instrumentation and materials can all be rapidly and efficiently brought to bear on 

the problem.

2) Learning rapidly about what is going on and developing a rapid and rough sense of 

what risks may exist to people and the environment. This means, for example, that 

field measurements made in the early stages of a disaster should probably be 
3

designed quite differently (different instruments, quality assurance, etc.) than 

measurements that are made for long-term monitoring and remediation. It means 

that one needs to have access to and prior experience with appropriate fast 

modeling and monitoring tools. It also means that with some prior geo-coded 

inventories of what materials (sewage, chemical stores, etc.) might be available for 

release during a disaster one should be able to anticipate some aspect of likely 

exposures, and the consequent measurement and modeling needs.

3) Communication with the general public and with non-technical decision makers in 

a meaningful way. There is clear empirical evidence that such communication will 

be much more effective if it is based on the prior development and iterative 

empirical testing of at least the kernels of key messages and disseminated by 

trusted organizations or individuals. There is also clear evidence that helping 

people figure out what numbers mean, what their choices are, and what they should 

do to protect themselves, their children, their employees, and the environment, are 

all critical.

4) Coordination and communication with other key players. EPA has specific 

statutory responsibilities in terms of what it is and is not responsible for. However, 

in the context of an environmental emergency, "that's not my department" is not a 

satisfactory answer. The general public is likely to look at the Agency's name and 

expect it to take a wider range of responsibilities than it is likely to actually have. 

In order to avoid serious misunderstanding and inadequate response, there clearly 

needs to be coordination in both message and action. The SAB saw the briefings it 

received as strongly suggesting that such coordination and effective communication 

would almost certainly not happen unless there are pre-developed plans and 

messages that have been developed and rehearsed among relevant parties.

5) Flexibility, including the ability to adapt procedures and make real-time decisions 

when previous plans are not working. It was clear from the briefings that the most 

successful private organizations the SAB heard from have been very good at 

identifying strategies that are not working and making improvement rapidly. 

Figuring out how to replicate this ability to adopt an iterative approach in federal 

agencies clearly presents challenges that need to be addressed.

6) Delegation to folks in the field, and the willingness of senior management to back 

their decisions, was another characteristic of the successful private organizations 

the SAB heard from. Again, figuring out how to replicate this capability in Federal 

agencies clearly presents challenges that need to be addressed.

7) Mobilization of personnel and resources in a rapid and orderly way was a 

characteristic of the successful private organizations the SAB heard from. In the 

case of EPA, there is considerable expertise across the agency, including its 

laboratories, which might be mobilized if there were adequate prior planning, 

training and rehearsal. How much of this has already occurred is not clear to the 

SAB.
4

The SAB recommends that as EPA works to improve the way in which it identifies, 

assesses, prepares for, and responds to possible future environmental disasters, it 

should examine and seek to learn from the best practices of other public and private 

organizations. 

3. Identifying a Range of Potential Environmental Disasters 

There is no way to know the future. Some enormous but imaginable environmental 

disasters, such as the impact of a large meteorite, or a continental-scale lava flow, are of 

such low probability that it would make little sense for EPA, with its limited resources and 

large set of obligations, to spend time thinking very much about them (Smil, 2008). Other 

environmental disasters will be sufficiently small or local in extent that it is unlikely that 

EPA would become involved. However, there are other regularly occurring environmental 

disasters, such as floods and hurricanes that have significant human health and 

environmental impacts (SAB, 1995, 1999).

When Agency staff think about environmental disasters, typically, they start with 

one of the 15 DHS National Planning Scenarios2

 and the Agency's authorities (Box 1,

Appendix A) and go from there. While this is appropriate, the committee believes that it 

would also be wise for the Agency to develop a systematic taxonomy of plausible events 

and plausible combinations of events3

, ask what would be the environmental consequences 

of each, and then in a systematic way, starting with those whose consequences are 

potentially most serious, ask: 

• what agencies would deal with the various consequences? 

• what responses and coordination would be needed? 

• where are the gaps in authority and expertise? 

• what other parties are likely to have key roles? 

• what if any short term waivers to regulations and other rules might be 

needed and what mechanisms are needed to achieve these in a way that 

balances efficiency with protection and other objectives? 

• what needs to be done to facilitate good coordination within EPA, with 

other Federal Agencies, with state and local government, and with the 

private sector? 

• where are there commonalties across different types of environmental 

disasters that could be exploited to develop more efficient and effective 

response plans? and 

• what would the public expect of the EPA? 

A very simple illustration of how such a taxonomy might be developed is provided 

in Table 1 (see Appendix A). Other structures are also possible. The key point is to first 

 

2

EPA is an active participant in the DHS-coordinated Incident Planning Management Team (IMPT), which, 

among other activities, is conducting detailed panning related to the National Planning Scenarios. Note that 

all of the scenarios involving chemical releases involve "attacks." While these events could be extremely 

dangerous, so too could a wide range of accidental releases. The latter may actually be more likely. 3

By combinations of events we mean things such as a large earthquake combined with wildfires, a 

consideration of whether key infrastructures such as power and communication continue to operate, or 

whether there are cross linkages between infrastructures (e.g. power available to run compressor stations in 

natural gas supply systems or to run pumps in water and sewer systems), etc. 
5

develop some way to think systematically about the full range of plausible disasters the 

Agency might be called upon to address. 

The entries in Table 1 are still abstract. The next step, once a taxonomy of this sort 

is developed, is to select a range of specific events and think through their consequences. 

Suppose, for example, that a major volcanic event was to occur in the Pacific Northwest - 

essentially a larger scale version of the Mt. St. Helens eruption but with impacts that 

extend to a number of population centers such as Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, or the 

Portland area. Clearly, such an event could have a large number of consequences. In 

Addition, to wide-spread devastation of precious terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and 

forest resources, there could be extensive loss of life, widespread destruction of built 

property, and disruptions of critical infrastructures, such as power supply, communication, 

roads and water. One way to explore these would be to build a set of "influence diagrams" 

that trace out various causal chains. Figure 2 (see Appendix A) shows a highly simplified 

example of the impacts that such an event might have on the sustained contamination of a 

water supply. 

Figure 3 (see Appendix A) presents an illustrative time line for pre- and post-event 

planning and action. The main features of pre-event analysis include: identifying likely 

measurement needs; developing measurement tools and protocols, and risk analysis and 

consequence analysis tools; identifying likely communication needs and developing pretested communication modules that can be modified once the specifics of an event are 

known; identifying issues of jurisdiction/coordination; planning for longer term 

remediation needs; and identifying and implementing mitigating actions and strategies that 

could reduce or eliminate risks. Illustrations of a few post-event actions are shown on the 

right hand side of Figure 3. 

Over the course of the past two years, the SAB has had occasion to review a 

number of geographical information systems being developed by different regional EPA 

offices. If these efforts were better coordinated, the result could be a very useful tool for 

pre-event analysis to identify and assess the various facilities that could result in sources of 

difficulty (such as chemical or other contamination). The availability of such a system or 

systems could also prove invaluable during the actual management of an event once it had 

happened. 

Clearly, developing such assessments will take time and care. The agency will not 

be able to do this for a large number of potential natural, accidental and terrorist-caused 

disasters all at once. Accordingly, 

the SAB recommends that the EPA establish a small interdisciplinary 

Environmental Disaster Assessment Team of five to seven fulltime 

professionals who are charged with working across the agency to identify, 

prioritize and assess potential environmental disasters. 

We believe that with the right people, resources, and mandate, such a group could 

make very substantial progress in just a few years. After developing a taxonomy of 

possible risk events, and working up a modest number of example assessments, such a 

group could then use these results as a basis to consult with Regional Offices, The National 

Homeland Security Research Center, key mission offices across the Agency, and the 
6

Agency's Office of Research and Development, in order to set priorities across potential 

disaster scenarios (some of which would be generic in nature, some of which, like 

earthquakes or volcanic events, would be specific to geographical regions). As the work of 

such a small assessment team progressed, they would certainly find many situations in 

which the same sequences and responses apply across many different events and 

contingencies. 

EPA does not have a mandate to deal with all aspects of environmental disasters. 

Indeed, in many cases, the legal mandate is limited to only a modest sub-set of all the 

issues that may arise. However, 

the SAB recommends that the small Environmental Disaster Assessment Team

recommended above start by prioritizing a systematically developed list of 

potential disasters and then that it perform, or arrange for others to perform, a 

reasonably comprehensive assessment of those that are deemed to be of greatest 

concern. 

The SAB makes this recommendation for three reasons. First, without such a 

comprehensive anticipatory approach, the EPA runs a high risk of finding itself unprepared 

and playing catch-up in the face of future environmental disasters. Second, without such 

an approach, coordination with other Agencies may be spotty. Finally, without such a 

systematic approach, eventualities will likely arise in which no clear preparation has been 

made by any Federal agency to deal with at least some aspect of an acute environmental 

problem and, even if EPA's mission does not encompass that contingency, the public will 

likely look to the Agency for leadership, or blame the Agency for an inadequate response. 

 Of course, there are others at EPA's Homeland Security Research Center, EPA 

ORD, regional EPA offices, in DHS research centers, at Department of Energy National 

Labs, in universities, and in other research and operational entities, who have done 

portions of such assessments. Clearly, the proposed Environmental Disaster Assessment 

Team should build upon the prior work of such groups as it proceeds with this effort. 

Having put in place an ongoing process to perform such assessments (starting with 

the highest priority issues), the Agency will be in a much better position to: 

• prepare and practice response plans for a range of high probability events; 

• identify likely gaps in expertise and develop prior arrangements with experts and 

organizations who can provide the needed knowledge and skills; 

• develop a geo-coded list of this expertise so that these connections can be made 

rapidly in an emergency; 

• identify short term waivers to regulations and other rules that might be needed and 

prearrange mechanisms to achieve these waivers in a way that balances efficiency 

with protection and other objectives;

• develop and pre-test public communications messages, that can be easily modified 

to meet the specific needs of different contexts, to deal with those events; 

• engage in coordination activities with other Federal, State and private parties; and 

• develop measurement and quality assurance protocols that will allow rapid 

dissemination and use of field measurements in the early stages of a disaster. 
7

While the Agency is already doing many of these things in the context of specific risk 

scenarios and legislative authority, the SAB believes that great benefit could be obtained 

from a parallel effort that adopts a more holistic and comprehensive approach of the sort 

outlined. 

4. Geographically Specific Tools for Data Display, Analysis and Decision Support 

 

In this and the following section, we turn to a more detailed set of issues, some of 

which relate to the small Environmental Disaster Assessment Team proposed in Section 3, 

but most of which are more relevant to the ongoing work of the EPA emergency response 

program. 

Assessing potential future disasters, planning for response, and executing an 

effective response once a disaster has occurred, all require information and modeling and 

analysis capabilities at a variety of scales (local, regional, and national). Local first 

responders such as fire, emergency services, or police, can respond and routinely are first 

to address the immediate needs created by small local disasters. However, as the spatial 

scale of the disaster increases additional resources, information and tools are needed to 

respond and address the consequences of the disaster. 

 EPA has developed a variety of spatial analysis tools incorporating geographic 

information systems (GIS) and fate and transport models that, while developed for other 

purposes, could be made applicable to the needs of emergency responders by providing 

information helpful in identifying vulnerable populations and environmental resources at 

the state, regional, and national scales. These tools incorporate GIS data layers such as 

land use, infrastructure, location of chemical storage facilities, industrial facilities, human 

census tract data, sensitive environmental and public health receptors, and a myriad of 

other spatially explicit databases into decision support systems. EPA has also developed 

and uses transport and fate models capable of estimating the dispersion of chemicals, 

particles, microorganisms, and radiation released by a disaster into the air and water. If 

modified for use in disaster setting, some of these tools could be particularly valuable for 

disaster managers responding to incidents at the regional scale. The following paragraphs 

provide details on a number of salient issues. 

a) Models, Tools, and Resources. Maximum preparedness for short- and long-term 

emergency response actions requires development and maintenance and 

deployment of a variety of models, tools and other resources (resource systems). 

Consultations by EPA with SAB and Homeland Security Advisory Committee 

(HSAC) have addressed specific elements of this overall system resource 

portfolio but have not provided the overall context for SAB and SAB's 

Homeland Security Advisory Committee (HSAC) consideration of these 

reviews. 

The SAB recommends that EPA compile an inventory of existing 

models, tools and resources, including those that, while developed for 

other purposes, might be made useful for disaster response. 
8

Once these "assets" have been listed (including applicable assets from other 

agencies) they should be mapped against the list of disasters identified in National 

Planning Scenarios and by the proposed Environmental Disaster Assessment Team 

and their applicability to each should be established. EPA has special expertise in 

risk assessment of building disasters and building decontamination, water and 

wastewater infrastructure assessment, surface water and groundwater quality 

modeling, air quality modeling, emission locations and databases, municipal and 

industrial site locations, and ecological risk assessment. EPA tools may be 

especially useful in decision support for certain types of disaster response, and 

these applications should be identified a priori. 

 

One example where this may already have happened is the Water Security 

Initiative (WSI), successor to the Water Sentinel Model that EPA developed for 

assessing the vulnerability of water distribution systems under various 

contamination scenarios. WSI consists of models and other tools to provide: 

enhanced physical security monitoring; water quality monitoring; routine and 

triggered sampling of high priority contaminants; public health surveillance; and, 

consumer complaint surveillance. 

b) Identification of Gaps and Prioritization of Research Needs. Following 

completion of such an inventory of models and other tools,

The SAB recommends a comprehensive assessment and report of the 

gaps in the available resource systems, and a listing of needs for further 

development and research. 

The list of gaps in the resource system inventory should be prioritized. This 

prioritization process should consider the environmental and human health 

consequences caused by missing tools or information, the impacts of related 

consequences (including spatial and temporal scales), and other relevant criteria. 

This analysis should enable optimization of the allocation of EPA resources to fill 

these gaps over the short-, intermediate- and long-term. 

The SAB recommends that the listing of development and research 

needs (identified in the gap analysis) be prioritized and conveyed across 

the Agency. 

Once gaps and research needs have been identified, the SAB would be pleased to 

review the results and offer its advice. 

c) Characteristics of Models, Tools and Resources. Effective use of resource 

systems requires functionality and reliability under a wide variety of 

circumstances and conditions, including disaster response situations. These 

characteristics should include: 

• Portability. To the extent possible, resource systems should be portable to allow 

transportation and usage in difficult field conditions. The systems should be 

designed to be field-ready. 
9

• Redundancy. There should not be any single expert or expert-system that 

cannot be replaced in an emergency. Duplication of function is a necessity. 

• Interoperability. Models and databases must be compatible with those from 

other agencies. Personnel with various backgrounds, and from other agencies, 

should be able to use them. 

• Resiliency. These systems should be robust and have limited vulnerability. To 

the extent possible, resource systems should be able to operate when central 

power sources and direct internet access are not available, and they should not 

rely solely on standard communication lines to function. 

d) Dissemination and Maintenance of Resource Systems. To achieve maximum 

effectiveness, resource systems must be disseminated to the full range of 

potential users, including first responders and long term-managers at the local 

and State level, in addition to EPA central office and regional staff and other 

federal agencies. Relevant databases such as the Toxics Release Inventory 

(TRI), which is under threat of losing essential data due to proposed changes in 

thresholds of reporting, is nationally computerized and available and should be 

preserved. The Chemical Storage Inventory under the Clean Air Act 112(r) is 

another example of data that can be helpful in emergency disaster planning and 

response and should be digitized for ready access by first responders. Resource 

systems should be maintained to keep their contents current, reliable and easily 

searchable. 

The SAB recommends that EPA solicit feedback from users, 

particularly local and state personnel including first responders, and 

regional EPA managers, regarding resource systems and where 

necessary digitized databases to support improved disaster response 

decisions. 

Periodic updates of resource systems should consider comments and criticisms 

from users. The results of audits of response performance following actual 

events and trials should also be used in maintenance and updating of resource 

systems. 

 

e) Document the Basis of Decisions. During a disaster decision makers have little 

time and thus it would be inappropriate to require detailed written justification 

of all decisions that are made. At the same time, if the Agency is to learn from 

past experience, some documentation of the considerations and factors that lead 

to key decisions would be extremely valuable. 

The SAB recommends that EPA develop simple streamlined methods to 

document the basis of decisions made in the course of managing 

environmental disasters. 

For example, this might be as simple as equipping key decision makers with 

small digital audio recorders which would allow verbal documentation that 

could subsequently be transcribed. 

 
10

f) Audits of Event Response Performance. EPA should play a special role as 

compiler and synthesizer of performance results and characteristics. The 

Agency often identifies problems which are commonly referred to as “lessons 

learned”, but "lessons" are not really "learned" and have little value until 

procedures and behaviors are changed (continuous improvement). While we are 

aware of and have read the reports by the Agency's Inspector General on EPA's 

performance during several recent environmental disasters, we are not persuaded 

that these sufficiently meet this need. 

The SAB recommends that EPA perform and encourage performance 

audits of event responses by its staff at the local, state, regional and 

national level. 

g) Sensitivity of Resource Systems. In some cases, components of resource systems 

developed by EPA may be too sensitive to warrant general release to the public 

or to local and state entities. 

The SAB recommends that EPA carefully assess the content of its 

resource systems to evaluate the security risks associated with their 

release. 

Criteria recommended by SAB for this evaluation include the ability of system 

resources to be used to implement an attack, or to optimize consequences of an 

attack. Examples of resource systems that have components with considerable 

risk associated with release include the “consequence modeling” component of 

the Water Sentinel program and, to a lesser extent, the incident modeling in 

Emergency Consequence Assessment Tool (ECAT). For example, if a 

calibrated Water Sentinel model for a specific utility falls into the wrong hands, 

it could be used against that utility by attacking them at their most vulnerable 

distribution system locations. 

 

h) Development of Resource Clearinghouse. The SAB endorses efforts like those 

in ECAT to compile a wide breadth of information in a user-friendly form. This 

work should also include internet enabled tools (with and without securityrelated access controls) and coordination of spatial data bases (land use, land 

cover, census data, chemical plants). It is presumed that all counties in the US 

have an inventory of all chemical facilities, power plants, water and wastewater 

treatment facilities, hazardous waste generators, storage facilities, hospitals, 

research labs, universities, etc. located within their jurisdictional boundaries, in 

terms of types and amounts of potential contaminants and their coordinates. 

These inventories, as well as Federal databases in which EPA has primary 

authority, need to be updated annually. Thus, 

The SAB recommends that EPA emphasize its role in the development 

of centralized and streamlined virtual libraries of references, guidance 

materials and models, and other resources. 

Completion of the tasks outlined in this section should prove valuable to the small 

interdisciplinary Environmental Disaster Assessment Team recommended above in 
11

Part 3 of this report, and that team should be consulted in the formulation and 

completion of these tasks. However, this team should not be given primary 

responsibility for completing these tasks so as not to divert its attention from the 

critically important job of identifying, ranking, assessing and planning for possible 

future environmental disasters. 

5. QA/QC for Data During Emergencies 

Field measurements made during the early stages of a disaster have a different 

purpose than field measurements made for long-term monitoring and remediation. 

Emergency responders and citizens need fast order-of-magnitude indications of the nature 

and level of hazards that they may face. Accordingly instrumentation, quality assurance 

procedures for authorizing the release of data, and measurement priorities need to be 

designed to appropriately meet those needs. 

Many existing EPA data protocols do not emphasize rapid response, because they 

have been developed to meet the needs of long-term monitoring and regulatory activities. 

Especially in the early stages of an emergency, the quality of data may have to be balanced 

against the need to get information to users on the time-scale they require. This balance 

should be worked out in advance, so that procedures are already developed and approved 

before the emergency occurs, and a graceful transition can be achieved from rapid orderof-magnitude assessment to increasingly more time consuming and accurate 

characterizations as time goes by (See Figure 2 in Appendix A). While the SAB is pleased 

to see the creation of the Agency's Environmental Response Laboratory Network, with its 

focus on "screening/sentinel laboratories," "confirmatory laboratories," and "reference 

laboratories" this is an issue that warrants additional attention. 

The SAB recommends that EPA develop procedures for rapid field 

measurement, data analysis and data release to the public during the early 

stages of emergencies, as well as protocols for how those procedures will be 

modified to assure greater precision and quality control as needed in later 

stages of the life-cycle of an environmental disaster. 

6. Improved Communication and Public Consultation 

Communication needs and content are highly context dependent. Before, during 

and after events, the goals and methods for effective communications should be different. 

For example, during an event when immediate protective actions are needed, rapid oneway approaches are critical. However, before and after events, these methods are rarely 

appropriate. In these periods, dialogues with decision makers, stakeholders and 

representatives of the public are key ways for building knowledge about current contexts 

and information needs and preferences. Development of messages based on knowledge 

and empirical testing enhances the probability of effective decisions and actions during 

events. Without such fundamental and current knowledge, communications may create 

problems where few or none existed. 

Effective communication between many different parties is essential: a) in 

performing assessments and making plans before an environmental disaster occurs, b) in 

protecting human health and ecosystems during the initial stages of an environmental 
12

disaster, and c) in managing long-term protection, clean-up and recovery from an 

environmental disaster. 

Communications about environmental disaster requires two-way interactions within 

the U.S. EPA, across agencies, and with partners and the public.4

 In designing any 

communications program, one must ask the question: "How can information be transmitted 

to elicit well informed decisions and behavior by individuals, first responders, decision 

makers and organizations?" 

Communications need to occur throughout the process of assessing, preparing for, 

and responding to environmental disasters. Of course, the purpose and form of the 

communication often needs to change at different stages along the life cycle of an event 

(Figure 2 Appendix A). For example, immediate protective guidance is often necessary 

during the initial response phase while there is great uncertainty, while more specific 

guidance is provided during later stages when more information is available and 

uncertainties have been reduced. 

 No aspect of communication is more important than communication with the 

public – including both those directly affected by the event and the general public. Too 

often, communication is seen as the one-way conveyance of facts, guidance and decisions 

from experts and those in charge to a passive receiving public. Sometimes in a crisis 

situation such one-way communication is necessary ("You need to stay in your house and 

seal the doors and window because a cloud of toxic gas is rapidly approaching"). As 

elaborated below, even in such situations, communications are likely to be far more 

effective if generic versions have been carefully developed, empirically evaluated and 

refined ahead of time through careful two-way interaction with individuals who are typical 

of the intended audience. 

Recent years have witnessed considerable progress in developing a scientific basis 

for risk communication. The key insight from this work is that a priori there is no such 

thing as an expert in the design of the content of effective risk communication messages. 

It is essential to adopt an empirical approach. Unless one understands the way in which a 

recipient will interpret and understand a message, even as simple a message as "Take a wet 

cloth to cover your face in the event you find yourself being exposed," one can have no 

confidence that it will be properly understood. 

Behavioral social scientists have developed a variety of strategies to determine, 

through empirical studies, the "mental models" that people adopt in thinking about risks 

(Fischhoff, 2005; Morgan et al., 2002). They have also developed empirical strategies for 

testing and refining possible messages (Fischhoff, in press). Unfortunately, with almost no 

behavioral social scientists on staff, EPA does not possess the expertise to make use of 

such methods.5

 

 

4

In this connection the EPA is developing and deploying an emergency management data architecture known 

as Emergency Management Portal (EMP). The office is also working closely with regions to establish 

communication standards and assure that needed equipment is available. Finally the Agency has developed a 

Crisis Communication Plan. However, none of these activities appear to be well informed by modern 

behavioral social science. 

5

EPA's National Homeland Security Research Center has run a series of workshops on "message mapping" 

(Covello et al., 2007). While these have identified many issues that deserve consideration in the event of 
13

This absence of understanding and expertise also has implications for other aspects 

of EPA's mission. For this reason the SAB makes two related recommendations: 

First, ORD should re-establish its program in behavioral social science and risk 

communication research, perhaps by reinvigorating the very successful 

collaboration it once had with the NSF Program in Decision Research and 

Management Science (DRMS). 

Second, in assembling the small interdisciplinary Environmental Disaster Assessment 

Team proposed above in Part 3, at least one or two of the members should have 

a strong working understanding of, and ability to apply, modern methods of 

empirical social science for developing risk communication strategies, and the 

design, testing and refinement of risk communication messages.

Frequent, transparent interactions with partners (within the Agency, across 

agencies, and with others) in advance of events are an important part of building 

communication readiness. Purposes of these interactions and related research include: 

• Determination of how people form their concepts of risk and related issues, as well 

as how people make decisions and what information influences their decisions. 

• Development and rigorous pre-testing of consistent messages for a variety of 

scenarios and receivers. Scenarios formulation should include representatives of the 

public and mass media to ensure that exercises involve their perspectives and gauge 

the likelihood of behaviors that would have significant impacts in real events. 

Representatives of other partners appropriate to the scenario should also be 

involved both in drills as well as in debriefings after exercises. During an event, 

zero tolerance for false positives often works against providing the public with 

timely and useful protective information. The tradeoffs in risks (e.g., public health 

and environmental vs. organizational) are important considerations that should be 

clearly identified and articulated by decision makers. When uncertainty prevents a 

definitive decision, warnings that include protective actions and specific guidance 

should be issued with a caveat to stay tuned in for more certain information. Pretesting such messages would yield considerable insights about what will and will 

not work well in eliciting desirable behaviors. 

• Anticipation of how people would respond to communication initiatives (messages 

and interactive engagements), especially under stressful conditions. Research is 

needed to identify how first responders, decision makers and the public are most 

likely to respond to communication initiatives. 

• Empirical research involving formative and summative evaluations of risk 

communication activities is essential to ensure continuing progress. 

In environmental disasters EPA should endeavor to ensure that information the 

Agency has developed gets to the persons or organization that are trusted by the intended 

receivers (in crisis conditions) or partners (in routine conditions). In some situations, 

another entity or person (e.g., local official or community leader) will be seen as a more 

 possible water security emergencies, no empirical studies are included of how various audiences might 

understand and interpret alternative messages. 
14

trusted source of information. In those circumstances, the EPA should focus on getting the 

best possible information to that party and helping him/her promptly interpret and use the 

information correctly. In preparation for an event, EPA should a) recognize and be in 

contact with trusted social networks within a community, and discover the ways in which 

information is currently and rapidly disseminated (e.g., reverse 911, e-mail, instant 

messaging, YouTube and other networks) 

There is an urgent need to improve consultation with the public on a variety of 

tough choices that many environmental disasters can present. An obvious example is 

decisions about "how clean is clean enough" when restoration to pre-disaster conditions is 

neither technically nor economically feasible. Effective mechanisms to perform such 

consultation are lacking. 

The SAB recommends that the development, demonstration and evaluation of 

mechanisms for better including public values and preferences in clean-up 

decisions should be an element of the reinvigorated program of behavior 

research in ORD. 

The SAB understands that EPA has developed a Crisis Communication Plan and 

already participates in a wide variety of multi-agency drills and exercises on disaster 

response. The SAB also recognizes that selected employees within EPA have been 

assigned to red or blue response teams, and they are already recognized for their 

capabilities in specialized areas of disaster response. These employees are expected to stop 

all other duties in the event of a disaster and devote themselves solely to the response for 

however long it takes. Such employees have laptop computers especially dedicated for 

disaster response, and they have successfully executed drills in “bunker” locations. 

However, it is our belief that shortcomings may still exist in the area of communications, 

and that the ability to locate and contact each person in the network during a disaster has 

not been given proper attention by the agency or by Homeland Security. 

The SAB recommends that a failsafe method for communication among key 

members of the disaster response team be designed, implemented and tested 

on a regular basis. 

Obviously, responders must be able also to communicate with critical models, databases, 

and decision support tools and convey the results of their analysis to responsible parties. 

7. Summary and Restatement of Key Recommendations 

Thinking broadly and becoming more anticipatory should be a goal of every 

agency. While it is doing a good job of addressing those aspects of environmental 

disasters for which it is responsible in the context of DHS National Planning Scenarios 

EPA would be well advised to also think more broadly and in a more anticipatory way 

about the full range of possible environmental disasters that could arise from natural 

causes, accidents or the actions of terrorists. To this end the Science Advisory Board 

recommends that the EPA: 

a) Establish a small interdisciplinary Environmental Disaster Assessment Team of 

five to seven professionals who are charged with identifying, prioritizing and 
15

assessing potential environmental disasters. This team should develop a system 

to identify potential environmental disasters, prioritize them based on 

probability and consequence, and identify common attributes and response 

strategies that could improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agency 

response. 

b) The Environmental Disaster Assessment Team should perform, or arrange for 

others to perform, reasonably comprehensive assessments of those disasters 

deemed to be of greatest concern. It should then help and advise the Agency to 

further: 

• Identify gaps in coverage by Federal, state and local authorities and needs 

for improved coverage, coordination and preplanning; 

• Develop prior arrangements with experts and organizations who can 

provide the needed knowledge and skills and develop a geo-coded list of 

this expertise so that these connections can be made rapidly in an 

emergency; 

• Identify short-term waivers to regulations and other rules that might be 

needed and prearranged mechanisms to achieve these waivers in a way that 

balances efficiency with protection and other objectives.

In support of the mission of the Agency's emergency response program, the SAB 

recommends that the EPA: 

 

c) Examine and seek to learn from the best practices of other public and private 

organizations. In so doing, it should seek strategies by which it, and other 

responsible parties, might better: 

• anticipate, assess, plan for, and practice responses to deal with major 

events that plausibly might occur in coming years; 

• learn rapidly what is going on and develop a rapid and rough sense of what 

risks may exist to people and the environment; 

• effectively coordinate and communicate with other key players including 

first responders and the public; 

• respond with flexibility to the specific needs and circumstances of the event 

at hand, including the ability to adapt procedures and make real-time 

decisions when previous plans are not working; 

• delegate decision authority to responsible individual in the field; and 

• mobilize personnel and resources in a rapid and orderly way.

d) Compile an inventory of existing models, tools, data and resources, including 

those that, while developed for other purposes, might be made useful for disaster 

response; perform a comprehensive assessment and develop a report on the gaps 

in the available resource systems; solicit feedback from users of these tools, 

particularly local and state personnel and regional EPA managers, regarding 

resource systems; and identify further development and research needs. Since 

some of these tools may involve sensitive information, their content, and 

associated access policies should be carefully reviewed to assure an appropriate 

balance between needs of local and regional responder and the public and the 

necessity for protection against misuse. Emphasize EPA’s role in development 
16

of centralized and streamlined virtual libraries of references, guidance materials 

and models, and other resources. 

 

e) Develop procedures for rapid field measurement, data analysis and data release 

during the early stages of emergencies, as well as protocols for how those 

procedures will be modified to assure greater precision and quality control as 

needed in later stages of the life-cycle of an environmental disaster. 

 

f) Develop simple streamlined methods to document the basis of decisions made in 

the course of managing environmental disasters. 

 

g) Conduct performance audits of event responses by EPA staff at the local, state, 

regional and national level. 

 

h) Finally, to better ground its work on communications in modern behavioral 

social science, the SAB recommends that the EPA reinvigorate its program in 

behavioral social science research and application, perhaps by reestablishing the 

very successful collaboration it once had with NSF-DRMS. This should 

include: i) a strong program in empirically based methods of risk 

communication, and development, demonstration and evaluation of mechanisms 

for better including public values and preferences in post-disaster clean-up 

decisions. 
References 

Allison, Graham T. and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision Second Edition, Longman - 

Addison Wesley Longman, 1999, 416 pp. 

Covello, Vincent, Scott Minamyer, Kathy Clayton, "Effective Risk and Crisis 

Communicaton during Water Security Emergencies: Summary report of EPA sponsored 

message mapping workshops," EPA/600/R-07/027, March 2007. 

Fischhoff, B. (2005). Cognitive processes in stated preference methods. In K-G. Mäler & 

J. Vincent (Eds.), Handbook of Environmental Economics, pp. 937-968, Amsterdam: 

Elsevier. 

Fischhoff, B. , "Risk perception and communication", in R.Detels, R.Beaglehole, 

M.A..Lansang, and M. Gulliford (eds), Oxford Textbook of Public Health, Fifth Edition, 

Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press. 

Morgan, M. Granger, Baruch Fischhoff, Ann Bostrom and Cynthia Atman, Risk 

Communication: A mental models approach, 351pp., Cambridge University Press, New 

York, 2002. 

SAB (1995), "Future Issues in Environmental Engineering," EPA-SAB_EEC-95-004, US 

EPA Science Advisory Board, Washington, DC. 

SAB (1995), "Environmental Impacts of Natural Hazards: The need for Agency action," 

EPA-SAB_EEC-99-COM-003, US EPA Science Advisory Board, Washington, DC. 

Smil, Vaclav, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years, MIT Press, 320pp, 

2008. 

 

R-1
APPENDIX A 

Tables, Figures, and Illustrations 

A-1 

Box 1: Summary of EPA's authorizations and responsibilities with respect to environmental 

disasters. 

EPA has over 30 years experience in responding to releases of oil and hazardous materials under the 

National Contingency Plan (NCP) that was established and/or modified by the Comprehensive 

Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), 

and the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Most of these responses do not rise to the level of Incidents of 

National Significance that are the focus of the National Response Framework (NRF) and the National 

Incident Management System (NIMS) which are required by various Homeland Security Presidential 

Directives (HSPDs). Typically, EPA receives over 30,000 release notifications per year (hazardous 

materials account for about 66% of the total notifications and oil spills for about 34%). Under this 

program EPA conducts 300 responses per year and assists in about 500 others. Specific EPA 

responses are to: i) environmental emergencies, ii) acutely hazardous sites/inland oil spills, iii) 

nationally-declared disasters, iv) terrorist incidents, and v) major national security events. Response 

activities include, but are not limited to: i) sampling and monitoring, ii) site screening, iii) 

decontamination, iv) disposal, v) dust mitigation, and vi) data management. 

Under EPA’s national approach to responses to Incidents of National Significance, the system that the 

Agency uses to respond to oil and hazardous material releases, under the NCP are integrated into the 

NRP and NIMS structure and are used when EPA responds within that structure as a part of the total 

national response to such incidents. 

The National Response Framework provides a comprehensive and coordinated structure to prepare for 

and respond to all Incidents of National Significance. The NRP, coupled with the nationwide response 

template of the NIMS provides the response structure and mechanisms that enable government and 

nongovernmental agencies and organizations to provide an all-hazards approach to emergency 

response activities. The system established is able to address large-scale events needing national 

leadership (e.g., the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, and Agencies such as EPA) 

for incident management and smaller events where localized management is more appropriate (e.g., 

state and local officials and organizations). 
Figure 1: The preparedness cycle as outlined in the January 2008 National Response Framework. EPA has 

worked hard applying this approach to the aspects of many disasters for which it has primary responsibility. 

A-2 
Table 1: One possible example of a structure that EPA might use to develop a taxonomy 

of potential environmental disasters. 

Natural events 

Events With Humans 

or their Systems in the Causal Chain 

Biologically related 

Disease (natural) 

Invasive species (natural) 

Geologically related 

Earthquake 

Flood plain events 

Volcanic eruptions 

Weather related 

Drought 

Flood (e.g., Tsunami, storm surge) 

Lightening 

 Wildfire 

Wind (e.g., hurricane, tornado) 

Complex network system failures 

Dam, levee, dike failures 

Disruption of network infrastructures 

(e.g., power, water, sewer, high- 

 ways, rail, pipelines, etc.) 

Large structural collapse 

Nuclear events 

 

Human induced (unintentional and 

intentional) 

Biological 

Chemical release 

Explosions 

Fire 

Invasive species 

Radiological 

Water, air, food contamination 

Note: While many of the items listed here involve precipitating events that happen suddenly, for 

completeness any such taxonomy should also include events that develop more gradually (e.g. 

droughts, invasive species) whose consequences are never-the-less disastrous. When more than one 

disturbance occurs, the response may be more extreme than would occur when these disturbances 

occur singly. (Paine et al., 1998) 

 

A-3 
Forest 

fire

Blast 

Large Volcanic 

Event 

Ash Fall 

Lava flow 

Mud Flow 

Debris 

Avalanche

Disruption of 

Electric Power 

System 

Disruption of 

waterways

Accumulation of 

organic materials 

in water bodies 

Blockage or 

destruction 

bridges and 

highways

Destruction of 

buildings & 

equipment 

Disruption of 

communication systems

Pump and 

Treatment 

Failures 

Hum

Hea

Inability to Make 

Repairs

Contamination 

of Water

Ecos

He

Figure 2: Simplified illustration of an influence diagram tracing some of the routes by which a volcanic ev

result in sustained contamination of water supply 

A-4
Figure 3. Pre- and post-event tasks for an environmental disaster. Many of the actions noted sh9ould be performed at 

 A-5

Pre-event planning 

Pre-event Planning and Anticipatory Consequence Analysis Post-event Response 

Prior actions that could reduce or eliminate risks 

Measurement Risk analysis and consequence analysis tools Communication 

Jurisdiction / Coordination Remediation 

Mitigation 

“Crisis” Phase 

Refined 

Measurement

L

Order of magnitude risk assessment

Initial Risk 

Communication On-going refinement f

Refined modeling and 

risk assessment 

Interaction and coordination b

and with other entities 

Interaction between and 

with first responders

Pre-placement of equipment, development of protocols, etc. Pre-development of base methods Pre-development & testing of base messages; pre-planned communication channels SOPs, etc. Drills 

Pre-event mitigation and avoidance

Event duration: 

 Moments to Weeks

Initial rapid measurement

“Management

” Phase

For an Event of a given type:
APPENDIX B 

Disaster Prevention and Management Experts Presenting Information to the SAB 

Name Organization

Mr. Joseph Becker 

Mr. Patrick Brady 

Ms. Debbie Dietrich 

Dr. Baruch Fischhoff 

Mr. Michael Lunsford 

Ms. Suzanne Mattei 

Dr. L.D. McMullen 

Mr. Alan Nelson 

Mr. Timothy Overton 

Mr. Timothy Scott 

Dr. Gayle Sugiyama 

Ms. Dana Tulis 

Mr. William Wark 

Dr. Henry Willis 

The American Red Cross 

BNSF Railway 

EPA Office of Emergency Management 

Carnegie Mellon University 

CSX Transportation 

The Sierra Club 

Des Moines Water Works 

Nuclear Energy Institute 

Dow Chemical Company 

Dow Chemical Company 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 

EPA Office of Emergency Management 

Unites States Chemical Safety and Hazard 

 Investigation Board 

The Rand Corporation 

B-1