Remedy Resilience: Vulnerability Assessment

Consideration of future conditions in cleanup projects is most effective through use of a place-based strategy, due to variations in the geophysical characteristics of contaminated sites, the nature of remedial actions, and local or regional environment and weather regimes. High-level screening identifies significant changes in future site conditions (such as temperatures, precipitation rates and sea level rise) and associated remedy protectiveness. The screening process involves:

Evaluating the site remedy's exposure to hazards of concern (such as high floodwater or soil subsidence).
Evaluating the remedy's sensitivity to the hazards of concern (likelihood for the hazards to affect remedy protectiveness).

Where warranted after screening, a project team may choose to conduct a detailed vulnerability assessment.

Conducting Vulnerability Assessments at Superfund Sites

Potential Hazards

A hazard potentially affecting a remediation system may involve:

An event, such as a hurricane.
A sustained change, such as drought.
An unanticipated project parameter, such as increased stormwater.
A technological problem arising in the system or site infrastructure, such as a power loss.

Resources for Conducting Vulnerability Assessments

Resources to help project managers and other stakeholders understand and identify potential hazards at specific sites are available online from EPA and other federal agencies. The types of resources range from interactive desktop tools to extensive information compendiums that can support site cleanup decision making.

Information Resources for Conducting Remedy Vulnerability Assessments	Temp-erature	Precip-itation	Wind	Sea Level Rise	Wild-fires
Department of Agriculture Forest Service Wildfire Risk to Communities Interactive charts and maps to help understand, explore and reduce wildfire risk in a user-selected state, county or community					♦
EPA National Stormwater Calculator Desktop and mobile applications to estimate rainwater and runoff frequency from a specific site based on soil types, drainage, topography, precipitation, evaporation and future climate change scenarios		♦
Federal Emergency Management Agency Flood Map Service Center website Floodplain maps		♦
National Integrated Drought Information System U.S. Drought Portal website Updates to the U.S. Drought Monitor map, drought impact summaries and forecasts		♦
National Interagency Coordination Center National Interagency Fire Center website Regional outlooks on wildlife activity and maps of current fire locations			♦		♦
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Services Digital Coast website Resources to help communities assess coastal hazards, such as the Sea Level Rise Viewer for visualizing community-level impacts of flooding or sea level rise and downloadable LIDAR data		♦	♦	♦
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Centers for Environmental Information website Web-based portal for climate and weather data and information such as monthly summaries of U.S. temperatures and precipitation, periodically updated maps on economic impacts of weather and climate disasters, and special topics.	♦	♦	♦		♦
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Sea Level Trends Interactive desk-top map viewer with details about local sea level trends		♦	♦	♦
National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center website Data on soil moisture, evaporation, precipitation, runoff and temperature affecting drought conditions	♦	♦
National Weather Service National Hurricane Center website Advisories, forecasts, and historical data on hurricane activity			♦
National Weather Service Sea, Lake, and Overland Surges from Hurricanes A computerized model to estimate storm surge heights and interactive web mapping to evaluate worst case storm surge inundation scenarios in coastal areas		♦	♦
National Weather Service Storm Surge Hazard Maps Interactive desk-top map viewer depicting storm surge flooding vulnerability in U.S. hurricane-prone areas along the eastern, Gulf of America and Puerto Rico coasts		♦	♦
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: The Climate Explorer Interactive graphs and maps showing past and projected climate conditions for counties and county-equivalents across the United States	♦	♦
U.S. Geological Survey Coastal Change Hazards Portal Interactive map illustrating potential coastal change vulnerabilities, rates of shoreline change, and probability of erosion due to storm events or long-term sea level rise				♦
U.S. Geological Survey Landslide Hazards Program website Information on landslide risks and a national landslide inventory map		♦
U.S. Geological Survey National Ground-water Monitoring Network Data Portal Online access to current and historical data including water levels, water quality, lithology and well construction at more than 20,000 water-level and water-quality monitoring wells across the nation		♦
U.S. Geological Survey National Climate Change Viewer website Interactive map to visualize projected changes in climate and water balance (snow water equivalent, runoff, soil water storage and evaporative deficit) on an 4-by-4-kilometer grid	♦	♦
U.S. Geological Survey National Water Dashboard - Online map-based viewer of provisional real-time water data and access to historical data such as peak streamflow at USGS observation stations across the nation
U.S. Geological Survey StreamStats Web application with geographic information system tools for characterizing and estimating stream flow statistics at user-selected sites		♦

Remedy Resilience: Vulnerability Assessment

Potential Hazards

Resources for Conducting Vulnerability Assessments

Superfund