CHARLES RIVER ANALYTICS, INC. — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A13-078

Description

Environmental awareness has become an increasingly important issue for military training facilities. Given the nature of military training activities, it is crucial for training facility managers to understand the relationships among repeated contaminant release, contaminant migration, and available mitigation techniques. Current technologies used to assess the impact of contaminants do not consider contaminant migration characteristics, such as infiltration and surface runoff, as information sources to determine the correct timing of remediation techniques. They also do not assess the tradeoffs associated with contaminant release over time and cost. By understanding these factors and relationships, facility managers will be better able to minimize environmental damage at training facilities, collaborate more effectively with the facilitys Environmental Control Office (ECO) or other relevant organizations, and understand the consequences of prolonged mitigation, such as rising mitigation costs and equipment use constraints in certain training areas. Based on a successful Phase I feasibility demonstration, we propose to develop and evaluate a system for Contamination and Lasting Effects Analysis for Negative Substances and Elements (CLEANSE). CLEANSE provides workflows that address facility managers tasks and decision making, supports reasoning about environmental effects by providing straightforward access to expert knowledge and model results, and supports reasoning about mitigation strategies.