Examples of environmentally sensitive areas include fish hatcheries, parks, wetlands, sanctuaries and national forests. Similarly, data on economically sensitive areas, such as water intakes and marinas, must be collected. The approach taken by the EPA and the IAPC was to develop and compile databases on these sensitive areas, which can be distributed on diskettes to emergency responders and planners.
Data continue to be collected and entered into the databases.
All copies of the Region 5 ACP contain diskettes of these databases for use in emergency planning and response. In addition, latitude and longitude coordinates are being collected for each record in the databases. In the near term, this will allow these items to be plotted and distributed on paper maps. In the future, it is hoped that these data will be actively used with a GIS on-site at a spill. Viewing data in a GIS or on a map, as opposed to a tabular format, allows the data to be seen in its geographic context.