Transforming EPA Science to Meet Today's and Tomorrow's Challenges (2023) / Chapter Skim
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In that light, ORD asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to form a committee to identify emerging scientific and technological advances from across a broad range of disciplines, such as environmental monitoring and data science, that ORD should consider in its research planning to support EPA's mission, provide advice on how ORD might strategically position its research and development enterprise to anticipate and respond to the future research needs of the agency, and consider advances that help EPA better incorporate systems thinking into interdisciplinary approaches. OVERALL CONCLUSION The key challenges associated with environmental protection today are complex and affected by many interacting factors, requiring a host of new scientific tools and methods.
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but expands it to provide a comprehensive ecological and human framework to enhance ORD's scientific capability for considering the complex interactions among environmental, social, and economic systems in support of EPA's mission. In setting priorities for the pursuit of the most important scientific capabilities, ORD will need to consider tools and approaches for clarifying the multiple ways in which societal activities are sources of significant environmental stressors; the multiple paths by which exposures from those stressors can occur to humans and other organisms; and the effects of those exposures at the cellular, organismal, population, community, and ecosystem levels.
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can help ORD integrate the One Health concept into the research context in which it must do its work; enhance ORD's scientific capability for considering the complex interactions among environmental, social, and economic systems; and lay the groundwork for continuing innovation and advances in support of EPA's mission. Recommendation S-1: ORD should extensively incorporate a systems-thinking One Environment –One Health approach into providing environmental protection science to address current and fu ture challenges.
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Although it has historically developed a number of innovative research initiatives, ORD often lacks consistency or larger-scale planning in how it approaches research design or investments for innovation. Recommendation S-4: ORD should re-energize the role of innovation and expand its capacity for innovation to better support EPA's mission.
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Geological Survey (USGS) and other organiza tions that integrates databases for public drinking water systems, domestic wells, and ambient water from across the United States to boost water surveillance and research nationwide.
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ACQUIRING AND APPLYING EMERGING TOOLS AND METHODS There are a host of new and emerging tools and methods that will become increasingly important to the scientific impact of ORD in the years to come. The committee identified a number of scientific and technological advances that ORD should consider in its research planning under the topics of measurements to inform exposure assessments, biotechnology, participatory research, and data science and machine learning.
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Geological Survey and other organ izations to develop a water quality system that integrates databases for public drinking water sys tems, domestic wells, and ambient water from across the United States to boost water surveillance and research nationwide. The development of an integrated, curated database that is continuously maintained for water quality monitoring and research should be a major goal of EPA in the coming years.
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The main distinction being that researchers may not necessarily have obtained accredited formal research training from accredited institutions. Participatory research methods and the environmental justice movement have come to the central stage in environmental health sciences, with the recognition that community input and engagement are essential to address the major environmental injustice challenges affecting society, including investigation and mitigation strategies.
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Novel algorithms and tools could be developed for rapid predictions of the complex interactions between human systems and natural systems, and for assessing the compound climate-pandemic health risks, including among low socioeconomic status communities. Recommendation S-13: To improve modeling of the complex interactions across human and nat ural systems and across different spatial and temporal scales, ORD should utilize recent advances in causal approaches and machine learning models, and leverage the machine learning capabilities of existing supercomputing facilities at government agencies, universities, and other organizations.
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Identifying Strategic Resources for the Future of EPA Science ORD has had a steep decline in total funding, personnel, and the amount of extramural research support it can provide. Current funding levels and continual uncertainty about future funding restrict ORD's capacity to provide critical science support to EPA for addressing future environmental threats.
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While a number of the committee's recommendations can begin to be implemented in incremental fashion, successfully revamping ORD's approach to innovative and anticipatory research will require ORD to revolutionize the way it operates, making sustained, progressive improvements each year and in each strategic planning cycle. The result will build on ORD's already substantial contributions to ensure that its science is ahead of the curve, and its science voice informs all of EPA's efforts to tackle the environmental challenges it will face for decades to come.
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