The Analyst

1
The Analysts PerspectiveTaking ICE
Nomenclature Out of the Drivers Seat

• Kevin Moody
• FHWA Resource Center (ENV TST)

2
Trend of Resource Attribute
?
Resilience
Risk to Sustainability
3
The Challenge

• Articulating Causal Links to Risk
• Useful Resource Attribute
• Two-Part Analysis
• Influence Diagrams, Feedbacks, and Adjustments
• Diagnosing Categories of Effects
• Encroachment Alteration
• Induced Growth and Related
• Rationalizing Mitigation Decisions
• Addressing Uncertainty

4
Environmental Impacts Analyses

• Analysis is part of assessment
• Single analytic approach, most laws and regs
• Address
• How resource attribute works f(x) y
• Risk to RECs sustainability with project
• rational range of mitigation options
• Analysis has two parts
• Action-focused (exposure-response profile)
• Resource-focused (risk evaluation)
• Action-focused part is input to resource-focused
  part

5
Two-Part Analytic Question

• To inform decisions, environmental impact
  analyses must be broken into two-parts
• How does the action interact with the resource
  attribute (exposure-response profile)?
• i.e., action-focused
• What does that effect mean from the perspective
  of the resource attributes sustainability
  (risk)?
• i.e., resource-focused

6
Sustainability

• Not Defined
• Law or Regulation Specific
• set by adminsitrative process
• Resource or Project Specific
• based on natural phenomena, community standards,
  perceptions
• Focus is on Most Probable State, Resilience,
  Trends and Conditions, etc.

7
Analysis and Assessment
Disclosing the Implications
Predicting Risk
Scoping
Identify useful information
Conduct 1. Action-Focused Analysis
Discuss uses and limits of the information
2. Resource-Focused Analysis
8
Exposure-Response

• What are Action-Focused Effects?
• Direct (NEPA) Caused by the action and occur at
  the same time and place.
• Indirect (NEPA) Caused by the action and are
  later in time or farther removed in distance, but
  still reasonably foreseeable

9
Evaluating Risk

• What are Resource-Focused Effects?
• Cumulative (NEPA) Impact on the environment
  which results from incremental impacts of the
  action when added to other past, present, and
  reasonably foreseeable future actions, regardless
  of agency or person

10
National Environmental Policy ActSection 102

• Intensity
• Context

11
Endangered Species ActSection 7

• Take
• Jeopardy

12
National Historic Preservation ActSection 106

• Alter significant characteristics
• Diminish the integrity of the resource.

13
Clean Water ActSection 404

• Direct and Secondary (effects associated with
  discharge, but not the result of actual placement
  of the material)
• Cumulative (the result of numerous piecemeal
  minor changes)

14
So-called Section 4(f)

• If avoidance is not practicable, analyze impact
  to resource (for mitigation)
• Paraphrased
• Not all impacts are the same magnitude
• (direct and indirect as warranted)
• Not all resources have the same integrity
• (context does project influence resource status,
  trend, or condition?)

15
Merging Best Practices
16
Useful Information

• APA and IQA reinforce sound science
• Always Disclose
• What we know
• Coherence (numeric and non-numeric)
• What we do not know
• uncertainty
• Relative importance of what we do not know
• reduce uncertainty?
• what if predicted outcome is wrong?

17
The Analysts PerspectiveQuestions?