Findings and Recommendations - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 186

Regardless of the specific tools and technologies EPA intends to invest its
resources on in the future, it must at least have knowledge of new technologies
and tools that are emerging in the areas of environmental science and engineer-
ing. 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 itself—to other
agencies, states, other countries, academe, and the private sector—to identify
relevant scientific advances and opportunities where collaboration 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 4: The committee recommends that EPA engage in a de-
liberate and systematic “scanning” capability involving staff from ORD,
other program offices, and the regions. Such a dedicated and sustained “fu-
tures network” (as EPA called groups with a similar function in the past),
with time and modest resources, would be able to interact with other fed-
eral agencies, academe, and industry to identify emerging issues and bring
the newest scientific approaches into EPA.
IMPROVED MANAGEMENT AND USE OF LARGE DATASETS
Without good data that show the state of the environment, how it is evolv-
ing, and how it is affecting people and ecosystems, it is difficult to do an effec-
tive, science-based job of environmental protection. EPA is gathering and will
continue to gather large amounts of data from a diverse array of sources and will
need to deposit such data into data management systems that are both secure and
accessible. EPA will need to have the capacity to systematically access, harvest,
manage, and integrate data from diverse sources, in different media, across geo-
graphic and disciplinary boundaries, and of heterogeneous forms and scales.
This capacity will depend on EPA maintaining and possibly increasing its cur-
rent information-technology capabilities that support state-of-the art data acqui-
sition, storage, and management. Capacity will also depend on having enough
senior statisticians in the agency to analyze, model, and support the synthesis of
data. EPA will need to continue to promote and engage in the development of
informatics techniques for seamless data integration and synthesis and robust
model development. As EPA continues to strengthen its informatics infrastruc-
ture, including data-warehousing and data-mining, it remains important to pay