Tutorial 3

Finding Facility-Level Information

This tutorial will explain some of the facility-specific features in the RSEI model, including geographic information system (GIS) capabilities.

Step 3.1 Select a Group of Facilities

In this step, you will make a selection based on the county where the releasing facilities are located.

Click on the Select button at the top left of the menu panel. This brings up the Select elements... screen, where you can specify what TRI releases you want to select. Note that if you have performed any selections since installing the RSEI model, your last selection statement will appear on the Select elements... screen. To remove it, simply click on the Clear button. You will see a line of text on the screen, 'Choose records where all of the following apply'. This is a bracket statement that tells the model what to do with the information that comes next. You can change the bracket statement from 'all' to 'any', 'none', or 'not all'. But for now let it remain 'all'. Click on the circle to the left of the text, and select 'Add condition'. The condition statement contains the criteria you use to select your releases.

You will see the following text line:

1. Chemical Flags.Year Chemical Added is equal to

Click on the first part of the text line, and a drop-down menu will appear. This menu contains all of the variables contained in the model that you can use in your selections. They are grouped according to the type of variable. Because we are selecting releases for facilities in a certain place, click on the variable group 'Facility Location'. To the right you will see another menu with all of the variables in this group. Click on 'County'.

The text line will change to '1. Facility Location.County is equal to '. Click on the blank at the end of the statement. In the window that appears, select the county (they are grouped alphabetically by state abbreviation). For this exercise, scroll down and click on 'AL, Montgomery,' which is Montgomery County in Alabama. This is your completed selection statement, as shown below.

RSEI model screenshot, 'Select elements...' showing the selection statement 'Choose records where all of the following apply: Facility Location.County is equal to AL,Montgomery.

Click Submit at the top of the Select elements... screen, and the model will perform the selection. This may take a few minutes to finish.

When the model is done with the selection, the Select elements... screen will disappear. The number of facilities, chemical releases, and elements that are selected in your set will be displayed in the top right corner of the screen. These numbers will remain displayed until you select a new set of scores. If you forget what your selection statement was, click on these numbers, and a window will appear with your original statement.

Now we can look at all of the facilities whose scores you have just selected. Click on the Selected Facilities Browser button in the second line of the menu panel. You will see a screen with three parts. The parts work together to provide detailed information on the facilities you have selected. The top part of the screen lists all the facilities whose scores have been selected. The bottom left is a US map you can use to display your selected facilities and other options. The bottom right of the screen displays information about the current map display and provides the buttons used to navigate the map and control its functions.

RSEI model screenshot, 'Selected Facilities Browser' showing a US map in the lower left corner, the list of names and characteristics of the selected facilities at the top, and information about the map in the bottom right corner.
The Selected Facilities Browser

Step 3.2 Getting Information About a Facility

Facility Information, Submissions, Releases and Scores
Double-click on the first facility name in the selected facilities list. You will see two options, 'Submissions' and 'Full Facility Record'. The latter option provides all of the information included in the model about this facility - its address, stack parameters, public contacts, etc. Double-click on 'Full Facility Record' or click on the plus sign to the left of the text to see all of the information. Then click on the minus sign at the far left to collapse it again. Expanding the 'Submission' option shows each chemical release that this facility has submitted to TRI. Double-click on a chemical name, then expand the 'Releases' option, and the model will show you the releases of that chemical - that is, the media that the chemical is being released to, as well as the total pounds released, and the total score. Double-click on the name of the media, and then on 'Scores' and the model will show you the score (the Risk-related Results of the model) for that chemical release to that media. To hide any of these records, simply click on the small minus sign at the beginning of the row. The list works like a directory tree that you can expand and collapse to see different levels.

Facility Location
You can also see where on the map your facility is located. With the facility name, or any part of the facility's submission record highlighted, click on the facility location icon in the lower right portion of your screen. The map will zoom into the state where your facility is located, and show you its exact location with concentric circles. If you click on the arrow to the right of the facility location icon, then 'Stream Path', the map will also display the nearest stream reach to that facility, and its path out to a larger receiving waterbody (such as a river, lake or ocean). If the facility ships waste to a landfill, POTW (Publicly-Owned Treatment Works), or other off-site facility, you can click on the 'Receiving Facility' option in the same menu to have the map zoom in on that facility. Similarly, you can map its stream path. If there is no associated receiving facility, the model will do nothing. TRI reporting facilities are shown as circles, and off-site (receiving) facilities are shown as squares. If you are not zoomed in close enough for the model to graph the stream path, when you click on that function, the model will just show you the concentric circles identifying where your facility is located. Zoom in on the area to see the stream path by clicking on the icon.

Population Around the Facility
By using the grid icon in the bottom right portion of your screen, you can map the population distribution around your facility. Click on the down arrow to the right of the icon, then select 'Population.' The map will show the population density in shades of green to blue, where blue is the most densely populated. The bottom right portion of the screen shows the legend, the name of the facility around which the population is being mapped, and the range, mean, sum, and standard deviation of the distribution. These statistics relate to the 1 km by 1 km grid cells which form the geographic basis of the model. For instance, if the legend displays 1.000-6.000 for a certain shade of blue, that means that all of the grid cells colored that shade have between 1 and 6 people in them.

Sample map showing the estimated population density for each grid cell around a selected facility, ranging in color from blue to green to indicate population density. The colored cells are overlayed onto a map showing county borders and roads where facilities and off-site facilities are shown as purple circles and yellow squares, respectively.

Air Concentrations Around the Facility
You can also use the grid icon to model air concentrations. Go to the list of selected facilities at the top, and click on a entry in the 'Releases' level (click on 'Submissions', then click on a chemical, then select a release). It must be either a stack or fugitive air release to be mapped. Once you have selected one, then click on the 'Concentration' option in the same drop-down menu to the right of the grid icon. The model will display the distribution of air concentrations (in µg/m³) of that release around the facility. Areas of higher concentration are shown in blue. The bottom right hand portion of the screen shows the map's legend, and describes the facility and release in blue, and then shows in black the range, mean, sum and standard deviation of the distribution. Note that this function uses EPA's ISCLT model to provide an illustration of what the air concentrations around the facility may look like. RSEI's risk-related results are calculated using a different air model (AERMOD), and the calculations for any release may differ.

Sample map showing the estimated air concentration plume for a selected facility ranging in color from blue to green to indicate concentration level. The plume is overlayed onto a map showing county borders and roads where facilities and off-site facilities are shown as purple circles and yellow squares, respectively.

To remove any graphing from your map, click on the Cells button, then Change Theme. In the dialog box under value, select 'None', then click OK. Any graphing on your map will be cleared. For more detail on map functions, please see Chapter 7 of the User's Manual.

Step 3.3 Further Analyses

The steps outlined above should give you a good idea about one particular facility. However, the model contains much more information that can show you how that facility has been performing over time, or how it ranks in comparison to all facilities in the country, or facilities in similar geographic areas, or in similar industries.

To do a time trend analysis to see if a facility's risk-related score is getting better or worse over time, first do a selection based just on that facility. The easiest way is to simply use the Facility ID, the first column in the Selected Facilities Browser, then go back to the Select elements... screen, and create a new selection statement with a condition that says 'Facility Identifier.Facility ID is equal to X', where X is the Facility ID from the Selected Facilities Browser (you can copy the Facility ID from the Selected Facilities Browser by right-clicking on the ID, then typing Control-C to copy the ID to the Windows clipboard. You can then paste the ID in the selection statement, or in any other Windows program by typing Control-V). When the model is done with the selection, you can click on the Summary button in the second line of the menu panel, and see preformatted graphs that show total score and pounds by year, and total pounds and total score by media by year.

To see how your facility ranks in relation to other facilities, first select a set that includes your facility and all of the facilities to which you want to compare it, for instance, all facilities nationwide in 2005. Your selection statement in the Select elements... screen would say 'Submission.Year is equal to 2005'. This selects all releases from all facilities in 2005. When the model is done with your selection, click on the Custom Tables button. Follow the directions in Chapter 9 of the User's Manual (or in Creating a New Table in the RSEI on-line Help) to make a crosstab table of your results. If you make a table using 'Facility Name' and 'SIC code' as row and column variables, then you can click on the Sorted Table button to see a ranking of all the facilities in order of highest score (or pounds, depending on what 'Summary' you have selected) to lowest score. If you want to look at the facilities that are in the same industry as yours, then apply the filter to 'SIC Code 1', and select just your facility's SIC Code. Then click back to the Sorted Table, to see a ranking of all the facilities just in that SIC code.

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