Battelle provides quality-assured, third-party performance assessments, including study design, laboratory and field technology tests, and objective reporting, to help you evaluate the performance of new environmental and homeland security technologies.

OUR APPROACH

Consulting with technology vendors, stakeholders, and your technical staff, Battelle services include preparing evaluation plans; identifying technologies; recruiting vendors; involving stakeholders; designing studies; performing field and laboratory tests, data collection, reference analyses, quality assurance oversight, independent observation and reporting; and disseminating information. For environmental monitoring technologies, performance parameters often include accuracy relative to a reference method; precision or repeatability; unit-to-unit reproducibility; detection limits; false positive/false negative rates; and operational factors such as ease of use, reliability, use of consumables, generation of waste, and cost. Battelle relies upon a variety of stakeholder groups to provide input on what technologies are valuable subjects for verification testing and for guidance in preparing test plans and conducting test procedures. Stakeholders serve as reviewers of test plans and reports, assist in contacting partners and host facilities for testing, and publicize the activities and results of the ETV program to their own circle of contacts. Battelle staff with experience in group management recruit stakeholders for participation, maintain frequent contact with individual stakeholders, and plan and lead meetings and conference calls with the various groups.

Core competencies in technology evaluation include:

• Environmental Technology Verification (ETV)—Since 1997, Battelle has cooperated with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide quality-assured, third-party performance assessments of environmental technologies, so that potential users and buyers can make informed decisions about those technologies. In particular, Battelle runs the Advanced Monitoring Systems (AMS) Center within the ETV program to evaluate monitoring or detection technologies and address technologies for pollutants and natural species in source emissions, air, water, and soil, in outdoor, indoor, and personal environments.
• SITE Monitoring and Measurement Technologies (MMT)—Battelle serves as EPA’s contractor to conduct technology demonstrations of site characterization and monitoring technologies in support of monitoring at Superfund sites under the Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) Monitoring and Measurement Technology (MMT) Program for a number of years. The SITE MMT Program was created to focus on providing reliable performance verifications of field characterization and monitoring technologies in support of Superfund site clean-ups.
• Technology Testing and Evaluation Program (TTEP)—Battelle conducts performance testing of homeland security related technologies for the National Homeland Security Research Center’s Technology Testing and Evaluation Program (TTEP). TTEP rigorously tests technologies against a wide range of performance characteristics, requirements, or specifications. The primary focus is testing commercially available technologies. The technology categories of interest include detection, monitoring, treatment, decontamination, computer modeling, and design tools for use by those responsible for protecting water infrastructure and decontaminating structures and the outdoor environment.