Environmental Data Communication: Reporting Enhances Good Management

With increased security concerns, the role of environmental data communication in management and decision making has become even more important and more challenging. Managers, employees, and external stakeholders of industry and government agencies need information about their workplaces, neighborhoods, and nation. They want their organizations and the environment to be well managed and the risk of environmental impacts minimized. Through innovative data collection and communication, Battelle is helping managers to accomplish this goal.

Managing and minimizing environmental impacts requires many strategies ranging from pollution prevention to sustainable development. Environmental data communication to staff and the public is a basic but complex step in this process. Community right-to-know programs require industry to report their emissions or chemical inventories, while voluntary systems, such as Responsible CareŽ and ISO 14001, encourage communication of such data. Both mandatory and voluntary reporting demand a commitment to openness and collaboration as data are collected and reported as clearly as possible. The process helps a company understand its impacts and better prioritize its environmental management activities. In some cases, organizations have significantly reduced their major waste streams because of communication programs, often reducing costs at the same time. What managers report, they understand and can manage.

Battelle integrates data communication into many of its environmental management projects for international industrial clients, government agencies, and its own research laboratories. At Brookhaven National Laboratory, Battelle’s program to improve environmental management includes increased monitoring, a comprehensive management system, and staff and public involvement. Brookhaven’s monitoring data are available in detailed Site Environmental Reports and through an innovative website that communicates groundwater monitoring results. The website’s graphical format clearly displays monitoring results, relevant environmental standards, minimum detection limits, radiation results below zero, and other advanced monitoring concepts, along with explanatory information and access to source data. By using such innovative approaches, Brookhaven became the first Long Island-based organization to achieve registration to the ISO 14001 environmental management standard.

Battelle also helps EPA to continually enhance the AIRNow website that provides the public with easy access to national air quality information through daily forecasts, as well as real-time air quality for over 165 cities across the United States. The site provides links to more detailed state and local air quality websites. Battelle is working with EPA, state, and local officials to expand the AIRNow website to provide fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) information. The goal is real-time reporting, mapping, and forecasting of PM_2.5 air quality to the public, via Air Quality Index maps on the AIRNow website.

For more information, contact Jill Engel-Cox at (703) 875-2144, engelcoxj@battelle.org.