Introduction - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 8

pipe” solutions, rather than proactive and oriented toward long-term goals that
will help the agency to address and possibly prevent environmental problems in
the future.
Today, despite its considerable successes, science at EPA is facing un-
precedented challenges. An NRC report, Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk
Assessment , identified new approaches to formulate environmental problems,
assess risks, and evaluate decision options (NRC 2009), which would facilitate
systems thinking and innovative problem-solving discussed in the current report.
Another recent NRC report, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA , identified broader
tools incorporating economics and social sciences for evaluating decision op-
tions and formulating research programs (NRC 2011). By acknowledging past
achievements and current efforts but also recognizing the many challenges that
EPA faces, the current report seeks to provide advice on the initiation of new
directions and approaches for science at EPA to ensure that the agency continues
to generate and make effective use of the world-class science and engineering
that are needed to accomplish its mission. Specific challenges that EPA faces
today and will likely face in the future and tools and technologies to address
them are elaborated on in Chapters 2 and 3 of this report.
THE COMMITTEE'S TASK
EPA asked NRC to assess independently the overall capabilities of the
agency to develop, obtain, and use the best available scientific and technologic
information and tools to meet persistent, emerging, and future mission chal-
lenges and opportunities. Those challenges and opportunities include new and
persistent environmental problems, changes in human activities and interactions,
changes in public expectations, new risk-assessment and risk-management para-
digms, new models for decision-making, and new agency mission requirements.
EPA asked that special consideration be given to a potentially increasing em-
phasis on transdisciplinary approaches, systems-based problem-solving, scien-
tific and technologic innovation, and greater involvement of communities and
stakeholders. NRC was also asked to identify and assess transitional options to
strengthen the agency's ability to pursue the aforementioned scientific informa-
tion and tools. In response, it convened the Committee on Science for EPA's
Future, which prepared the present report. The committee's full statement of
task is provided in Appendix A, and biographic information on the committee is
in Appendix B.
To accomplish its task, the committee held six meetings from June 2011 to
April 2012. The first two meetings included public sessions during which the
committee heard from several EPA staff and from a principal investigator at the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. In writing its report, the
committee gathered information through communication with EPA staff, from
resources on EPA's website, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and reviews and