Pathways to Enhance Environmental Assessment Information Systems

In the environmental field, modeling plays a critical role in connecting current data and knowledge with predictions of future events and environmental states. Environmental problems are quite challenging to solve because of the complex relationships among many contributing factors, both natural and man-made. Moreover, these problems need to be addressed not only by environmental engineers and regulators but also by a larger community consisting of concerned members of the public and nongovernmental organizations. Their demands on environmental modeling often conflict because predictions need to be accurate yet easily understood, communicated, and explored. The requirements for environmental modeling are generally identified as accuracy, defensibility, transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness. An approach to meet these requirements based on layered components, role assignments, and flexible integration strategies is identified, developed, and tested with prototypes. The results from the prototypes suggest possible enhancements for further advancing the use and communication of environmental modeling. Qualitative comparisons with other approaches are framed with identified criteria.