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OCR for page 107
4
Building Science for Environmental
Protection in the 21st Century
Since its formation in 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has had a leadership role in developing the many fields of environmental
science and engineering. From ecology to health sciences, environmental engi-
neering to analytic chemistry, EPA has stimulated and supported academic re-
search, developed environmental education programs, supported regional sci-
ence initiatives, supported and promoted the development of safer and more
cost-effective technologies, and provided a firm scientific basis of regulatory
decisions and prepared the agency to address emerging environmental problems.
The broad reach of EPA science has also influenced international policies and
guided state and local actions. The nation has made great progress in addressing
environmental challenges and improving environmental quality in the 40 years
since the first Earth Day.
As a regulatory agency, EPA applies many of its resources to implement-
ing complex regulatory statutes, including substantial commitments of scientific
and technical resources to environmental monitoring, applied health and envi-
ronmental science and engineering, risk assessment, benefitcost analysis, and
other activities that form the foundation of regulatory actions. The primary focus
on its regulatory mission can engender controversy and place strains on the con-
duct of EPA's scientific work in ways that do not affect most other government
science agencies (such as the National Institute of Environmental Health Sci-
ences and the National Science Foundation). Amid this inherent tension, re-
search in EPA generally, and in the Office of Research and Development (ORD)
in particular, strives to meet the following objectives:
Support the needs of the agency's present regulatory mandates and
timetables.
Identify and lay the intellectual foundations that will allow the agency
to meet environmental challenges that it faces and will face over the course of
the next several decades.
107
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108 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
Determine the main environmental research problems on the US envi-
ronmental-research landscape.
Sustain and continually rejuvenate a diverse inhouse scientific research
staff--with the necessary laboratories and field capabilities--that can support
the agency in its present and future missions and in its active collaboration with
other agencies.
Strike a balance between inhouse and extramural research investment.
The latter can often bring new ideas and methods to the agency, stimulate a flow
of new people into it, and support the continued health of environmental re-
search in the nation.
Those multiple objectives can lead to conflict. For example, ORD re-
sources that are applied to expanding staff and expediting science reviews and
risk assessment in the National Center for Environmental Assessment may di-
vert resources from longer-term program development and research. However,
the agency has shown itself capable of maintaining a longer-term perspective in
several instances, such as the establishment and maintenance of the Science to
Achieve Results (STAR) grant program for extramural research, anticipatory
moves to develop capability in computational toxicology, and the development
and sustained implementation of multiyear research plans, for example, for re-
search on airborne particulate matter (now the Air Quality, Climate, and Energy
multiyear plan). In each of those cases, EPA identified ways both to give longer-
term goals higher priority and to identify and commit resources to them. How-
ever, the tension between the near-term and longer-term science goals for the
agency is likely to increase as more and more contentious rules are brought for-
ward and as continuing budget pressures constrain and reduce science resources
overall.
In light of the inherent tension, the emerging environmental issues and
challenges identified in Chapter 2, and the emerging science and technologies
described in Chapter 3, this chapter attempts to identify key strategies for build-
ing science for environmental protection in the 21st century in EPA and beyond.
Specifically, the chapter lays out a path for EPA to retain and expand its leader-
ship in science and engineering by establishing a 21st century framework that
embraces systems thinking to produce science to inform decisions. That path
includes staying at the leading edge by engaging in science that anticipates, in-
novates, is long term, and is collaborative; using enhanced systems-analysis
tools and expertise; and using synthesis research to support decisions. In sup-
porting environmental science and engineering for the 21st century, EPA will
need to continue to evolve from an agency that focuses on using science to char-
acterize risks so that it can respond to problems to an agency that applies science
to anticipate and characterize both problems and solutions at the earliest point
possible. Anticipating and characterizing problems and solutions should opti-
mize social, economic, and environmental factors.
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 109
EMBRACING SYSTEMS THINKING FOR PRODUCING AND
APPLYING SCIENCE FOR DECISIONS: A 21ST CENTURY
FRAMEWORK FOR SCIENCE TO INFORM DECISIONS
The continued emergence of major new and complex challenges described
in Chapter 2--and the need to deal with the inevitable uncertainty that accom-
panies major environmental, technologic, and health issues--will necessitate a
new way to make decisions. As described in Chapter 3, systems thinking has
begun to take root in biology and other fields as a means of considering the
whole rather than the sum of its parts; this will be essential as increasingly com-
plex problems and the challenges described in Chapter 2 present themselves.
The emergence of "wicked problems", the increasing need to address exposures
of humans and the ecosystem to multiple pollutants through multiple pathways
(some of which are global), and the continuing challenges for the analysis and
characterization of uncertainty throughout science and decision-making combine
to make the adoption of systems thinking critical.
The systems-thinking perspective is useful not only for characterizing
complex effects but for designing sustainable solutions, whether they are inno-
vative technologies or behavioral changes. Understanding systems is also impor-
tant for determining where leverage points exist for the prevention of health and
environmental effects (Meadows 1999). To successfully inform future environ-
mental protection decisions in an increasingly complex world, systems thinking
must, at a minimum, include consideration of cumulative effects of multiple
stressors, evaluation of a wide range of alternatives to the activity of concern,
analysis of the upstream and downstream life-cycle implications of current and
alternative activities, involvement of a broad range of stakeholders in decisions
(particularly where uncertainty is significant), and use of interdisciplinary scien-
tific approaches that characterize and communicate uncertainties as clearly as
possible. As part of a systems perspective, it will be important for the agency to
engage in "systems mapping" to comprehensively understand the way in which
interacting stressors (such as environmental, human, technologic, socioeco-
nomic, and political stressors) map to health and environmental impacts and to
identify where intervention points can result in primary prevention solutions.
Although EPA has made efforts over the years to attempt to bring systems
concepts into its work, most recently in its efforts to reorganize its activities
under a sustainability framework (Anastas 2012), these efforts have rarely been
integrated throughout the agency, nor sustained from one set of leaders to an-
other. To begin to address the lack of a sustained systems perspective, the com-
mittee has developed a 21st century framework for decisions (Figure 4-1) and
recommends a set of organizational changes to implement that framework (see
Chapter 5). The framework features four elements that will be critical for in-
forming the complex decisions that EPA faces:
To stay at the leading edge, EPA science will need to
o Anticipate.
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110 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
o Innovate.
o Take the long view.
o Be collaborative.
EPA will need to continue to evaluate and apply the new tools for data
acquisition, modeling, and knowledge development described in Chapter 3.
EPA will need to continue to develop and apply new systems-level
tools and expertise for systematic analysis of the health, environmental, social,
and economic implications of individual decisions.
EPA will need to continue to develop tools and methods for synthesiz-
ing science and characterizing uncertainties, and will need to integrate methods
for tracking and assessing the outcomes of actions (that is, for being account-
able) into its decision process from the outset.
STAYING AT THE LEADING EDGE OF SCIENCE
EPA can maintain its global position in environmental protection by staying
at the leading edge of science and engineering research. Staying at the edge of
science knowledge requires staying at the edge of science practice. In addition to
understanding the latest advances in the science and practice of environmental
protection, EPA will need to continue to engage actively in the identification of
emerging scientific and technologic developments, respond to advances in science
and technology, and use its knowledge, capacity, and experience to direct those
advances. That is consistent with the two principal goals for science in the agency:
to safeguard human health and the environment and to foster the development and
use of innovative technologies (EPA 2012).
For EPA to stay at the leading edge, the committee presents a set of over-
arching principles for research and policy that begins to address the challenges
of wicked problems. To be able to predict and adequately address existing chal-
lenges and prevent on-the-horizon challenges, EPA's science will need to
Anticipate. Be deliberate and systematic in anticipating scientific,
technology, and regulatory challenges.
Innovate. Support innovation in scientific approaches to characterize
and prevent problems and to support solutions through more sustainable tech-
nologies and practices.
Take the long view. Track progress in ecosystem quality and human
health over the medium term and the long term and identify needs for midcourse
corrections.
Be collaborative. Support interdisciplinary collaboration in and outside
the agency, across the United States, and globally.
Those four principles support the flow of science information (from data
to knowledge) in EPA to inform environmental decision-making and strategies
for inducing desirable environmental behaviors.
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Complex Challenges for the Future
Problem Formulation
Hypothesis Generation
Needs Assessment
Technical Approaches
Analysis of Key Measures to Advance Knowledge
Knowledge
Data Acquisition Environmental Fate
Impacts
Ecologic Population Health
Biologic Data Modeling, Exposure and Dose
Physical Analysis, and Mechanism and Mode of Action
Chemical Synthesis Implications
Epidemiologic Costs
Socioeconomic Feedback
Outcomes Behavioral Behaviors
Balanced Informed Decisions Informatics Decision Options
Improved Health
Cleaner Environment
Lower Costs
Systems Thinking to Assess Implications of Decisions
Translation and
Applying Science that Anticipates, Innovates, Takes the Long View, Is Collaborative
Communication
Applications, Decisions, Synthesis and Evaluation Systems Tools and Skills
and Actions Sustainability Analysis Life-Cycle Assessment
Policy Solution-Oriented Approaches Cumulative Risk Assessment
Regulation Multiple-Criteria and Social, Economic, Behavioral,
Social Change Multidimensional Tools and Decision Sciences
Uncertainty Synthesis Research
FIGURE 4-1 The iterative process of science-informed environmental decision-making and policy. Leading-edge science will produce large
amounts of new information about the state of human health and ecologic systems and the likely effects of introducing a variety of pollutants or
other perturbations into the systems. In particular, many multifactorial problems require systems thinking that can be readily integrated into
other analytic approaches. This framework relies on science that anticipates, innovates, takes the long view, and is collaborative to solve envi-
ronmental and human health problems. It also supports decision-making and ensures that leading-edge science is developed and applied to in-
form assessments of the system-wide implications of alternatives for key policy decisions.
111
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112 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
Science That Anticipates
Continually striving to more effectively anticipate challenges and emerg-
ing environmental issues will help EPA to stay at the leading edge of science.
That involves two main sets of activities: anticipating concerns and developing
guidance to avoid problems with new or emerging technologies, and establish-
ing key indicators and tracking trends in human health and ecosystem quality to
identify and dedicate resources to emerging environmental problems. Further-
more, continuing to anticipate (and direct resources to) targeted science and
technology developments will allow EPA to enhance its ability to identify early
warnings and prevent effects before they occur. Fulfilling the anticipatory func-
tion can be difficult when the day-to-day pressures to respond to regulatory
deadlines can take most of, if not all, an EPA leader's time and attention. Hence,
anticipatory activities will need to be pursued in collaboration with other gov-
ernment agencies, the private sector, and academic engineers and scientists.
Anticipating Environmental and Health Effects of New Technologies
One example of EPA's efforts to identify emerging challenges has been
the engagement of its National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and
Technology (NACEPT). NACEPT is an external advisory board established in
1988 to provide independent advice to the agency on a variety of policy, tech-
nology, and management issues. The advisory council recently identified several
challenges that EPA will need to focus on in the future (EPA NACEPT 2009).
The most important challenges identified included climate change, biodiversity
losses, and the quality and quantity of water resources. NACEPT also identified
corresponding organizational needs for EPA to meet existing and emerging en-
vironmental challenges, including improving its ability to use technology more
effectively, to transfer technology for commercial uses, and to enhance commu-
nication in and outside the agency. The committee concurs with the advisory
council's observations that although EPA has demonstrated the ability to create
and implement solutions to new challenges in some cases, emerging challenges
need to be approached in a more integrated and multidisciplinary way. The
committee also concurs with NACEPT's recommendation that EPA include
"environmental foresight" or "futures analysis" activities as a regular component
of its operations.
Some of EPA programs, including its New Chemicals program and De-
sign for the Environment program (see Chapter 3), already demonstrate strate-
gies for anticipating and mitigating future problems (Tickner et al. 2005). In
those programs, EPA has used information on what is known about chemical
hazards to develop a series of models so that chemical manufacturers and formu-
lators can predict potential hazards and exposures in the design phase of chemi-
cals. The models are updated as new knowledge emerges. The Design for the
Environment example demonstrates that EPA will be best able to address
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 113
emerging issues through enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration and by using
systems thinking and enhanced analysis tools to understand the human health
and ecologic implications of important trends. Addressing emerging issues
should include consideration of the full life cycle of products, establishment of
large-scale surveillance systems to address relevant technologies and indicators,
and the analytic ability to detect historical trends rapidly.
Although EPA has engaged NACEPT and its Science Advisory Board
(SAB) to help in anticipating trends and has individual programs designed to
address concerns about existing and emerging technologies and identify promis-
ing new technologies (see, for example, EPA 2011a), the agency does not ap-
pear to have a systematic and integrated process for anticipating emerging is-
sues. The example of engineered nanomaterials (discussed below and described
in Chapter 3) illustrates some of the problems and pitfalls of current approaches
to emerging technologies. A better understanding of such technologies can help
to identify and avert ecosystem and health effects and in some cases to avoid
unwarranted concern about new technologies that pose little risk.
In principle, early consideration of environmental effects in the design of
emerging chemicals, materials, and products offers advantages to businesses,
regulatory agencies, and the public, including lower development and compli-
ance costs, opportunities for innovations, and greater protection of public health
and the environment. Yet, despite nearly 15 years of investment in engineered
nanotechnology and the use of nanomaterials in thousands of products, recogni-
tion of potential health and ecosystem effects and design changes that might
mitigate the effects have been slow to arrive. Indeed, a December 2011 report by
the EPA Office of Inspector General (EPA 2011b) found several limitations in
EPA's evaluation and management of engineered nanomaterials and stated the
following:
"Program offices do not have a formal process to coordinate the dis-
semination and utilization of the potentially mandated information.
"EPA is not communicating an overall message to external stake-
holders regarding policy changes and the risks of nanomaterials.
"EPA proposes to regulate nanomaterials as chemicals and its success
in managing nanomaterials will be linked to the existing limitations of those
applicable statutes.
"EPA's management of nanomaterials is limited by lack of risk infor-
mation and reliance on industry-submitted data."
The Office of Inspector General concluded that "these issues present significant
barriers to effective nanomaterial management when combined with existing
resource challenges. If EPA does not improve its internal processes and develop
a clear and consistent stakeholder communication process, the Agency will not
be able to assure that it is effectively managing nanomaterial risks."
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114 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
How EPA arrived at that situation provides important information for the
design and evaluation of new and emerging technologies. EPA was actively
working with other agencies to make large investments in nanotechnology dur-
ing implementation of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Devel-
opment Act. In particular, the agency saw the opportunity to use nanotechnology
in remediation and funded this type of research. However, it missed the oppor-
tunity to support research that addressed proactively the environmental health
and safety of nanomaterials, pollution prevention in the production of nanomate-
rials, and the use of nanotechnology to prevent pollution. In early years, the
agency focused primarily on the applications of nanomaterials and not on the
environmental and health implications. When it did begin to address implica-
tions, the agency focused its attention on defining nanomaterials and whether
they are subject to new policy structures because of size-specific hazards (an
issue that is still discussed) and on cataloging and redirecting existing research
and resources toward assessing exposure, hazard, and risk. The private sector
has been left looking for signals from the agency about how it should develop
and commercialize nanoscale products.
There were several reasons for the delay in early intervention in the case
of nanotechnology. One reason was that materials innovators were focused on
discovering new materials and promoting applications of them. Another reason
is that materials innovators often have little expertise or formal training in envi-
ronmental, health, and safety issues. Some of these innovators assumed that
nothing about nanomaterials presented new challenges for environmental health
and safety and that these were secondary matters to be considered only after
commercial products are developed. A third reason was that there was insuffi-
cient federal agency leadership, emphasis, and policy regarding proactive rather
than reactive approaches to safer design. Even with increasing knowledge about
the design of environmentally benign engineered nanomaterials, progress toward
incorporating greater consideration of health and safety in nanomaterial design
has been limited for a variety of reasons, including the lack of design rules or
other guidance for designers in developing safer technologies, the lack of exper-
tise in solutions-oriented research in EPA, and the lack of collaboration between
material innovators and toxicologists and environmental scientists.
The case of engineered nanomaterials indicates the need for EPA to estab-
lish more coherent technology-assessment structures to identify early warnings
of potential problems associated with a wide range of emerging technologies. If
EPA is going to play a major role in promoting and guiding early intervention in
the design and production of emerging chemicals (through green chemistry),
materials, and products, it will need to commit to this effort beyond its regula-
tory role.
Many new chemicals and technologies hold considerable potential to im-
prove environmental quality, and it may prove useful for EPA to take some spe-
cific steps to anticipate and manage new technologies that emerge from the pri-
vate sector. Some of these specific steps can be done in collaboration with other
agencies, industries, and research organizations when possible. They include:
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 115
Develop baseline design guidelines for new chemicals and technolo-
gies and fund research that can anticipate potential effects as part of technology
development.
Balance near-term research that is focused on understanding the poten-
tial risks posed by chemicals and technologies that are closer to commercializa-
tion with substantial development of longer-term predictive, anticipatory ap-
proaches for understanding the potential effects of the technologies.
Establish processes to collaborate with external partners in academe
and industry to attain needed expertise in the development of common metrics
for evaluation of emerging technologies.
Establish opportunities that educate and bring together chemical and
materials innovators and environmental health and safety experts (and other
stakeholders) to collaborate in understanding and intervening in chemical and
materials design.
Support efforts to amass and disseminate data, models, and design
guidelines for safer design to guide emerging technologies.
Embrace imperfect or incomplete information to guide actions. Uncer-
tainty will always exist in the case of emerging technologies, and identifying
alternative paths for action would allow EPA to act or provide guidance for de-
velopment and commercialization in the face of incomplete data.
Anticipating Emerging Challenges, Scientific Tools, and Scientific
Approaches
In recent years, EPA has had to make decisions on several headline-
grabbing environmental issues with underdeveloped scientific and technical
information or short timelines to gather critical new information, for example,
during natural disasters. EPA will always need the capacity to respond quickly
to surprises, in part by maintaining a strong cadre of technical staff who are
firmly grounded in the fundamentals of their disciplines and able to adapt and
respond as new situations arise. But the agency also needs to scan the horizon
actively and systematically to enhance its preparedness and to avoid being
caught by surprise. Anticipating new scientific tools and approaches will allow
EPA to fulfill its mission more effectively.
Collaboration is critical for identifying and addressing many of the topics
discussed in Chapter 2, such as trends in energy and climate change and "emerg-
ing" environmental concerns that are not new but are the result of improvements
in detection capabilities. For example, critics have suggested that the agency's
slow response to growing scientific concern about effects of pharmaceutical and
personal-care products in surface waters was due in part to its lack of infrastruc-
ture or collaboration to address problems that span media and jurisdictions
(Daughton 2001). EPA's efforts to anticipate science needs and emerging tools
to meet these needs cannot succeed in a vacuum. As it focuses on organizing
and catalyzing its internal efforts better, it will need to continue to look outside
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116 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
itself--to other agencies, states, other countries, academe, and the private sec-
tor--to identify relevant scientific advances and opportunities where collabora-
tion that relies on others' efforts can be the best (sometimes the only) means of
making progress in protecting health and the environment.
Finding: Although EPA has periodically attempted to scan for and anticipate
new scientific, technology, and policy developments, these efforts have not been
systematic and sustained. The establishment of deliberate and systematic proc-
esses for anticipating human health and ecosystem challenges and new scientific
and technical opportunities would allow EPA to stay at the leading edge of
emerging science.
Recommendation: The committee recommends that EPA engage in a delib-
erate and systematic "scanning" capability involving staff from ORD, other
program offices, and the regions. Such a dedicated and sustained "futures
network" (as EPA called groups with a similar function in the past), with
time and modest resources, would be able to interact with other federal
agencies, academe, and industry to identify emerging issues and bring the
newest scientific approaches into EPA.
Science That Innovates
Given EPA's mission and stature as the leading government environ-
mental science and engineering organization, it is imperative that it innovate and
support innovation elsewhere in technologies, scientific methods, approaches,
tools, and policy instruments. "Innovation" can be challenging to define for a
regulatory agency, but one component involves advancing the ability of the
agency to discover and characterize problems at a systems level and to provide
decision-makers with solutions that are effective and that balance the multiple
objectives relevant to the agency and society. Spinoffs from innovation within
the agency and activities to promote innovation outside the agency can help en-
vironmental authorities in states and other countries to solve their problems and
can encourage the regulated community to discover less expensive, faster, and
better ways to meet or exceed mandated compliance. Based on the above per-
spective and using analogies to the typical business definition of innovation, the
section below considers processes by which EPA can incorporate and promote
innovation.
Identifying Opportunities and Meeting Desired Customer Outcomes
Innovations typically begin with two processes: the identification of op-
portunity and the understanding of desired "customer" outcomes. An opportu-
nity is simply a "gap" between the current state and a more desirable situation as
envisioned by customers. The gaps can be technologic in nature (for example,
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 117
the need for the design of a new sensor to measure something of interest) or re-
lated to a process or business (for example, the need for an approach to obtain
up-to-date information from stakeholders). Once an opportunity has been identi-
fied and analyzed, an understanding of desired customer outcomes is needed to
create innovative solutions.
Understanding desired outcomes goes well beyond simply talking to cus-
tomers; it includes putting oneself in the clients' shoes to separate what they say
they want from what they want. A common mistake in trying to innovate is to
substitute desired producer outcomes for desired customer outcomes. While
EPA is in a different position from product manufacturers, only by understand-
ing why customers are purchasing products can the agency help promote crea-
tive solutions. One example is the development of alternative plasticizers for
polyvinyl chloride plastics rather than alternative materials that do not require
plasticizers. Another example is the creation of less toxic flame retardants rather
than creation of an inherently flame-retardant fabric or even consideration of
whether flame retardancy is needed for a particular part or product. Insightful,
unbiased determination of desired customer outcomes is crucial for proper sup-
port of innovation.
An innovative means of defining desired customer outcomes is ethnogra-
phy, hypothesis-free observation of customers in their "natural habitats". The
technique, pioneered by such design firms as IDEO (Palo Alto, CA), has pro-
duced a number of insights into consumer behavior that have been translated
into successful products. For EPA, the analogue of ethnography is the willing-
ness of staff to visit their "customers" (for example, industry, the general public,
or even specific EPA regional offices or laboratories) to see technology or sci-
ence needs, to see where current regulations or prescribed methods cause people
to struggle to conform, or to see where regulations create perverse results. An
example of the benefits of observing customer needs is the design of the copying
machine. In the 1970s, Xerox used anthropology graduate student Lucy Such-
man to observe how users interacted with their copying machines. Suchman
created a video showing senior computer scientists at Xerox struggling to make
double-sided copies with their own machines. Surprising ethnographic results
like that have led to a host of innovative alterations in office equipment that ren-
der the user experience much more productive (Suchman 1983). While direct
observation of this sort may be unusual for a regulatory agency, similar observa-
tional activities by EPA might lead to insights regarding how consumer products
are actually used (informing exposure models) or whether responses to specific
regulations have unintended consequences that could be readily addressed.
In business, innovation is a catalyst for growth. Business innovation in-
volves the development of ideas or inventions and their translation to the com-
mercial sphere. Innovation results in rapid (favorable) change in market size,
market share, sales, or profit through the introduction of new products, proc-
esses, or services. Those are clear outcomes that are relatively easy to measure.
In an agency like EPA, innovation plays a different role but one that is no less
important for the success of the agency in achieving its mission, adapting to
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150 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
innovation, or change in ecology or human health. The preference index then
leads to a partial ranking of the policy options under consideration and recom-
mendation of an "optimal" set of choices or competitive choices (Brans and
Vincke 1985). MCDM has been applied successfully in environmental decision-
making (Moffett and Sarkar 2006; Hajkowicz and Collins 2007); however, crite-
rion-specific constituents of the preference index for each policy option are af-
fected by the quality of the science and evidence, scaling, and other factors that
can limit validity (Hajkowicz and Collins 2007).
An alternative to single-objective formulations is to provide decision-
makers with the Pareto optimal set of nondominated candidate solutions. Essen-
tially, the Pareto optimal set is constructed by identifying decisions that can im-
prove one or more objectives without harming any other. Use of the Pareto op-
timal set does not determine a single preferred approach but presents decision-
makers with a smaller set of options from which to choose. The concept of
Pareto optimal sets is not new, but the capacity to apply it in decision-making
has been greatly expanded by recent methodologic advances in optimization
techniques (most notably multiobjective evolutionary algorithms) and computa-
tion of Pareto sets for large complex problems, and this has increased the scope
of environmental and other applications (Coello et al. 2007; Nicklow et al.
2010). Rabotyagov et al. (2010) give an example of evolutionary computation
for the analysis of tradeoffs between pollution-control costs and nutrient-
pollution reductions. Optimal sets of air pollution control measures have been
developed that consider aggregate health benefits and inequality in the distribu-
tion of those benefits as separate dimensions (Levy et al. 2007). Kasprzyk et al.
(2009) demonstrate how multiobjective methods can be used to inform policies
for the management of urban water-supply risks that are caused by growing
population demands and droughts. Multiobjective optimization in support of
environmental-management decisions is especially compelling given the emerg-
ing paradigm of managing for multiple ecosystem services and consideration of
cumulative risks for human health. Tradeoffs and complementarities can exist
between alternative services and between other relevant performance metrics
(for example, public and private costs and distribution outcomes by location or
income class). Applications of multiobjective optimization methods would pro-
mote the explicit specification of preference indices relevant to environmental
decision-making and science to quantify outcomes and evaluate tradeoffs; all
this would serve to improve the transparency and scientific soundness of deci-
sions.
Addressing Uncertainty in Complex Systems
With any of the solutions-oriented approaches delineated above, regard-
less of which analytic tools or indicators are used by EPA to support decisions in
the future, uncertainty will be an overriding concern. With increasingly complex
multifactorial problems and a push for tools that are sufficiently timely and
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 151
flexible to inform risk-management decisions (NRC 2009), the importance of
uncertainty characterization and analysis will only increase. It should be noted
that the increasing importance of uncertainty analysis does not necessarily imply
increasing sophistication of computational methods or even increasing necessity
of quantitative uncertainty analysis. As discussed in Science and Decisions: Ad-
vancing Risk Assessment (NRC 2009), uncertainty analysis is a component to be
planned for with the rest of an assessment, and a simple bounding analysis or
qualitative elucidation of different types of uncertainties may be adequate if it
shows that a given risk-management decision is robust compared with compet-
ing options (NRC 2009).
Consistent and holistic approaches are necessary for characterizing and
recognizing uncertainty (in particular the various types of uncertainty, including
unquantifiable systems-level uncertainties, indeterminacy, and ignorance). Such
approaches would allow EPA to articulate the importance of uncertainty in light
of pending decisions and not become paralyzed by the need for increasingly
complex computational analysis. In addition, applying uncertainty analysis co-
herently in all EPA's arenas would ensure that a policy or decision is both ten-
able and robust (van der Sluijs et al. 2008) and would ensure that uncertainty
analysis is a means to an end and is designed with the end use in mind. Simi-
larly, uncertainty analyses that are billed as comprehensive but omit key sources
of uncertainty have the potential to be misleading or to lead to inappropriate
decisions about research priorities and interventions. Finally, EPA would benefit
from communicating uncertainty more effectively. Uncertainty is often mistak-
enly viewed as a negative form of knowledge, an indicator of poor-quality sci-
ence (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992). There is therefore a perception that ac-
knowledging uncertainty can weaken agency authority by creating an image of
the agency as unknowledgeable, by threatening the objectivity of "science-
based" standards, and by making it more difficult to defend itself in the face of
political and court challenges. However, reluctance to acknowledge uncertainty
can lead EPA to rely on tools and methods that cannot provide timely answers,
can push the agency to use point estimates to defend what are policy decisions
(see Brickman et al. 1985), and runs counter to the value of uncertainty analysis
in informing research and decision priorities.
OVERARCHING RECOMMENDATION
The committee has described the important emerging environmental issues
and complex challenges in Chapter 2 and the many types of emerging scientific
information, tools, techniques, and technologies in Chapter 3 and Appendixes C
and D. It is clear that if EPA is to meet those challenges and to make the greatest
possible use of the new scientific tools, its problems will need to be approached
from a systems perspective. Although improved science is important for EPA's
future, it is not sufficient for fully improving EPA's capabilities for dealing with
health and environmental challenges. Better economic analysis, policy ap-
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152 Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead
proaches, stakeholder involvement, communication, policy, and integration for
systems thinking are also vital.
In the present chapter, the committee has recommended ways in which the
agency can integrate systems thinking techniques into a 21st century framework
for science to inform decisions. For EPA to stay at the leading edge, it will need
to produce science that is anticipatory, innovative, long-term, and collaborative;
to evaluate and apply new tools for data acquisition, modeling, and knowledge
development; to continue to develop and apply new systems-level tools and ex-
pertise; and to develop tools and methods to synthesize science, characterize
uncertainties, and integrate, track, and assess the outcomes of actions. If effec-
tively implemented, such a framework would help to break the silos of the
agency and promote collaboration among research related to different media,
time scales, and disciplines. In supporting environmental science and engineer-
ing for the 21st century, EPA will need to continue to evolve from an agency
that focuses on using science to characterize risks so that it can respond to prob-
lems to an agency that applies science holistically to characterize both problems
and solutions at the earliest point possible.
Finding: Environmental problems are increasingly interconnected. EPA can no
longer address just one environmental hazard at a time without considering how
that problem interacts with, is influenced by, and influences other aspects of the
environment.
Recommendation: The committee recommends that EPA substantially en-
hance the integration of systems thinking into its work and enhance its ca-
pacity to apply systems thinking to all aspects of how it approaches complex
decisions.
The following paragraphs provide examples of some of strategies that
EPA could use to help it set its own priorities and to enhance its use of systems
thinking.
Even if formal quantitative LCA is not feasible, increased use of a life-
cycle perspective would help EPA to assess activities, regulatory strategies, and
associated environmental consequences. Placing more of a focus on life-cycle
thinking would likely include increasing EPA's investment in the development
of LCA tools that reflect the most recent knowledge in LCA and risk assessment
(both human health and ecologic). In addition, it may be more cost effective for
EPA to provide incentives and resources to increase collaborations between
LCA practitioners in the agency and those working on related analytic tools
(such as risk assessment, exposure modeling, alternatives assessment, and green
chemistry). EPA has some internal capacity for LCA, but could benefit from a
more systematic use of such an assessment across the agency's mission.
Continuing to invest intramural and extramural resources in cumulative
risk assessment and the underlying multistressor data, including coordinated
bench science and community-based components, would give EPA a broader
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Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 153
and more comprehensive understanding of the complex interactions between
chemicals, humans, and the environment. A challenge before the agency is the
characterization of cumulative effects using complex, incomplete, or missing
data. Even as EPA seeks to improve its understanding of risks, some prevention-
based decisions may need to be made in the face of uncertainty.
In EPA's science programs, environmental decisions will only be effective
if they consider the social and behavioral contexts in which they will play out.
Such decisions can substantially affect societal interests beyond those that are
specifically environmental. Tradeoffs among environmental and other societal
outcomes need to be anticipated and made explicit if decision-making is to be
fully informed and transparent. Predicting economic and societal responses at
various points in the decision-making process is necessary to achieve desirable
environmental and societal outcomes. For these reasons, developing mecha-
nisms to integrate social, economic, behavioral, and decision sciences would
lead to more comprehensive environmental-management decisions. EPA can
engage the social, economic, behavioral, and decision sciences as part of a sys-
tems-thinking perspective rather than as consumers and evaluators of others'
science. Human behavior is a major determinant of the state of the environment
and, as such, should be an integral part of systems thinking regarding environ-
mental risk and risk mitigation alternatives. In addition, EPA would benefit from
a long-term commitment to advancing research in a number of related fields,
including valuation of health and ecosystem benefits.
Research centers that focus on synthesis research have demonstrated the
power and cost effectiveness of bringing together multidisciplinary collaborative
groups to integrate and analyze data to generate new scientific knowledge. De-
liberately introducing synthesis research into EPA's activities would contribute
to accelerating its progress in sustainability science. A specific area where
knowledge from systems thinking could be applied is in the design of safe
chemicals, products, and materials.
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