ANSI X12: Data standards for TQEM

One key development in environmental software is the adoption of a common electronic language for exchanging EH&S data. The ANSIX12-based data management tools offer compatibility across platforms within the company as well as between different companies. The X12 syntax makes it easy for environmental managers to integrate functions more closely with either materials management or quality management systems.     

Using Canonical Correlation Analysis to Identify Environmental Attitude Groups: Considerations for National Forest Planning in the Southwestern U.S.

As public land management agencies pursue region-specific resource management plans, with meaningful consideration of public attitudes and values, there is a need to characterize the complex mix of environmental attitudes in a diverse population. The contribution of this investigation is to make use of a unique household, mail/internet survey data set collected in 2007 in the Southwestern United States (Region 3 of the U.S. Forest Service). With over 5,800 survey responses to a set of 25 Public Land Value statements, canonical correlation analysis is able to identify 7 statistically distinct environmental attitudinal groups. We also examine the effect of expected changes in regional demographics on overall environmental attitudes, which may help guide in the development of socially acceptable long-term forest management policies. Results show significant support for conservationist management policies and passive environmental values, as well as a greater role for stakeholder groups in generating consensus for current and future forest management policies.     

THE ENVIRONMENTAL DISPLAY MANAGER: A TOOL FOR WATER QUALITY DATA INTEGRATION1

ABSTRACT: The Environmental Display Manager, EDM, is a development system on an IBM 3090 mainframe at the U.S. EPA National Computer Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. EDM provides mapping, display, analysis support, and information management capabilities to workstations located across the United States, and connected to EPA through federal, state, academic, and private communications networks. Through interactive software, EDM can quickly support analyses, create maps and graphics, and generate reports that integrate millions of pieces of environmental data. The concept of EDM is to provide easy access to environmental information, to provide automated environmental analyses and reports, and then to provide data, graphics, images, text, and documents that can be used by numerous output devices, software packages, and computers. The mapping cumponent works with an electronic version of the 54,000 7.5 minute quad sheets of the U.S. Geological Survey. The software also works with a hydrographic data base of the surface waters of the United States. With the maps, a user can look at the rivers in any state, can zoom in on a small pond, and can overlay and identify particular features such as industrial waste dischargers and factories. The hydrography allows routing for modeling programs, identification of upstream and downstream components, and linkage of environmental features associated with surface waters. Alternatively, users can query data based on latitude/longitude, city name, EPA permit number, state agency and station code, river name or number, and river cataloging unit. The maps can be overlaid with roads and environmental sites such as: municipal and industrial dischargers, Superfund sites, public drinking water supplies, water quality monitoring stations, stream gages, and city locations. Retrievals from related systems can be performed for selected sites creating graphics showing water quality trends, discharge monitoring reports, and permit discharge limits.     

Why—and how to—benchmark for environmental excellence

Benchmarking your company'S environmental program against that of another company or organization is one of the more effective means of assuring it is on track toward environmental excellence. If used properly and objectively, it provides a means of gauging the progress of your environmental program while allowing both companies to benefit from new and innovative ideas for improvement. Benchmarking is capable of measuring program efficiency, program design, and program outputs. Benchmarking also provides environmental managers the unique opportunity of sharing successes and failures with respect to program integration into operations. This article describes the steps involved in designing and implementing benchmarking to assess the design of an overall environmental management program.     

排污权交易管理信息系统设计

本文为我国的排污权交易设计了一套管理信息系统。该系统设计采用C/S和B/S混合架构体系,充分发挥了两者的长处。该系统一方面可以同时为环境管理部门、排污企业和社会公众三类主体提供信息化服务,大大方便了排污权的交易过程,并保证了排污权交易的公平与透明;另一方面可以使环境管理人员方便地查询和检索相关企业,简化了环境管理工作。     

Two-stage planning for sustainable water-quality management under uncertainty

In water-quality management problems, uncertainties may exist in a number of impact factors and pollution-related processes (e.g., the volume and strength of industrial wastewater and their variations can be presented as random events through identifying a statistical distribution for each source); moreover, nonlinear relationships may exist among many system components (e.g., cost parameters may be functions of wastewater-discharge levels). In this study, an inexact two-stage stochastic quadratic programming (ITQP) method is developed for water-quality management under uncertainty. It is a hybrid of inexact quadratic programming (IQP) and two-stage stochastic programming (TSP) methods. The developed ITQP can handle not only uncertainties expressed as probability distributions and interval values but also nonlinearities in the objective function. It can be used for analyzing various scenarios that are associated with different levels of economic penalties or opportunity losses caused by improper policies. The ITQP is applied to a case of water-quality management to deal with uncertainties presented in terms of probabilities and intervals and to reflect dynamic interactions between pollutant loading and water quality. Interactive and derivative algorithms are employed for solving the ITQP model. The solutions are presented as combinations of deterministic, interval and distributional information, and can thus facilitate communications for different forms of uncertainties. They are helpful for managers in not only making decisions regarding wastewater discharge but also gaining insight into the tradeoff between the system benefit and the environmental requirement.     

MEB's university-community partnerships foster new environmental leaders for business

As our society's environmental concerns have grown over the past 20 years, U.S. firms have struggled to find effective and inexpensive ways to meet their mushrooming environmental obligations. Many firms, recognizing the competitive advantages to be won through adroit environmental management, have begun to seek managers trained to deal with these issues. The corporate response has been hobbled by business schools'general failure to train managers to deal with crossfunctional issues, and by a specific failure to address environmental management in their curricula. In this article, the Management Institute for Environment and Business, a program of the World Resources Institute (WRI), describes its innovative University-Community Partnerships (UCP) project to address these shortcomings. Bringing new approaches and new thinking to management curricula, MEB and several like-minded organizations are breathing new life into the old MBA programs.     

Total quality product design—how to integrate environmental criteria into the product realization process

Recent case studies on the financial benefits of pollution prevention programs well attest to the notion that a commitment to the environment can help profitability not only by avoiding costs and potential liabilities, but also by generating environmentally-based opportunities for competitive advantage. Achieving these benefits, however, represents a complex management challenge that requires embedding environmental concerns in the day-to-day decisions and actions of a company'S employees. This article shows how the marriage of corporate environmental stewardship and TQM, better known as TQEM, is particularly well suited to the area of product design and why environmental health and safety experts can improve a product'S environmental performance.     

U.S. Postal service northeast area master plans: Cutting edge environmental management for the real world

The U.S. Postal Service faces a range of environmental challenges as broad as those encountered by many large industries. The Postal Service's Northeast Area has responded with a carefully crafted, far-reaching approach to environmental management that relies on several key components—chief among which is a comprehensive Environmental Compliance Master Plan.© 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Using EH&S management systems to improve corporate profits

An environmental management system (EMS) approach can improve overall corporate performance and demonstrate this improvement to top management in “dollars and cents” language. This article illustrates the importance of a financial management approach to justify investments in environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) excellence. It also describes in detail the elements of the EH&S management assessment and improvement process.     

The electric utility business case for investigating EMS: ISO 14000 and beyond

This article will focus on how a systems approach can be used as a strategic tool for environmental improvement that makes sense from a perspective of bottom-line financial performance. The author will discuss some real-world experience concerning how electric utilities are attempting to align environmental management more closely with business management theory and practice. The ISO 14000 standards have been proposed and, in many instances, finalized as global voluntary standards. How important will they be to the U.S. electric utility sector? ISO 14001, the EMS standard, has been promoted as a necessary “certificate” for those who sell products and/or services overseas. In fact, to be of value to most organizations, the standard must show that it can make a positive financial contribution, whether the service or product is marketed globally, nationally, or locally. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Kodak's framework and assessment tool for implementing TQEM

Total Quality Management provides a powerful management foundation and framework to implement an organization's environmental vision and principles. The elements of TQM include customer/stakeholder focus, a high degree of senior management commitment, a long-term focus, and tools such as continuous improvement, empowerment, and a prevention-based approach. This article describes a matrix developed by major U.S. and Canadian firms that serves as (1) a guide to organizations implementing TQEM from the ground floor up and (2) an assessment tool that can be used internally or externally to measure progress toward environmental management excellence and to identify opportunities for improvement. The matrix is based on categories adapted from those used in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award process. The relationship between individual matrix cell criteria and key concepts such as pollution prevention and sustainability is also described.     

Environmental performance indicators for enhancing environmental management

Traditionally, environmental issues and concerns have been viewed as a constraint to businesses. This has resulted in environmental managers relying heavily on a reactive, compliance-based approach to justify change. Businesses are now recognizing that efficient management in the environmental arena can benefit the entire company and open new opportunities for increased profits. Managers have acknowledged that environmental issues can be integrated into daily business trends and activities. Not only does sound environmental management decrease liability, but also in current markets a “green” image can attract investors and customers. This article shows how one tool that progressive companies are focusing attention on—environmental performance indicators—is being used to convey the current status of environmental issues and improve the management of these issues for the benefit of the company as well as the environment.     

环境监测数据管理系统的开发

在论述开发环境监测数据管理系统重要性的基础上,根据环境监测站的主要工作职能,确定了环境监测数据管理系统的功能,进行了系统总体设计和程序设计,开发出了操作方便、灵活实用的环境监测数据管理系统。     

Limitations of an optimum sustainable population or potential biological removal approach for conserving marine mammals: Pacific walrus case study

Decision rules are the agreed-upon points at which specific management interventions are initiated. For marine mammal management under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), decision rules are usually based on either a numeric population or biological-removal approach. However, for walrus and other ice-associated pinnipeds, the inability to reliably assess population numbers or biological removals highlights a significant gap in the MMPA, particularly when the Arctic environment is rapidly changing. We describe the MMPA's ecosystem-based management goals, and why managers have bypassed these goals in favor of an approach that depends upon numerical population assessment. We then revisit the statute's primary goals in light of current knowledge about the Pacific walrus ecosystem and new developments in environmental governance. We argue that to monitor and respond to changes in the walrus ecosystem, decision rules should be based on scientific criteria that depend less on the currently-impractical goal of accurately enumerating population size and trends, or removals from that population. Rather, managers should base decisions on ecological needs and observed ecological changes. To implement this approach would require an amendment to the MMPA that supports filling the gap in management with achievable decision rules. Alternatively, walrus and other ice-associated pinnipeds will remain largely unmanaged during a period of profound environmental change.     

Implementing industrial ecology and design for environment practices: Lawrence livermore national laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), one of the nation's three national security laboratories, is initiating a major research effort in industrial ecology with the goal of increasing the economic and environmental efficiency of the U.S. and global economies. Closer to home, ongoing efforts to reduce LLNL's environmental impact on the surrounding community provide an example of how the environmental efficiency of a major research facility can be systematically improved. In the late 1980s, LLNL initiated its waste minimization and pollution prevention program, changing its focus from end-of-pipe waste management to a proactive and preventive strategy—total quality environmental management (TQEM). LLNL's success in integrating pollution prevention with R&D and operational activities is well illustrated by the waste reduction and energy and water conservation accomplishments described in this article. LLNL represents a model of how industrial ecology, design for environment, and pollution prevention can be incorporated into a comprehensive R&D and operational program. This article describes LLNL's developing industrial ecology program, gives some specific technical accomplishments that have application to many industrial facilities, and presents a case study of TQEM at LLNL's remote experimental test facility, Site 300. The integration of TQEM philosophy with LLNL's scientific capabilities holds much promise for new ideas and creative solutions to national and international industrial ecology concerns.     

Managing Asia's environmental crisis: EQM opportunities for remediation and technology transfer

Conditions of environmental pollution and degradation in Asia are among the worst in the world. Rapid economic growth and industrialization over the past half century have accelerated the pollution of air, water, and land resources in a region with the world's largest concentration of population. As the economics of Asia recover from financial crisis in the late 1990s, they will face a more serious environmental crisis in the early years of the 21st century. Remediation of soil and water contamination will become a stronger concern in the region, as the human health impacts become more visible and widespread. Although environmental remediation is only beginning to emerge in Asia as a solution to problems of natural resource degradation, the authors show how U.S. firms with experience in quality environmental management and biological remediation technologies will find new opportunities for exports and technology transfer. Environmental technology and services firms interested in Asia must understand both the opportunities for and barriers to operating in Asia.     

Questions and answers. TQEM performance indicators—how do you measure up?

I have seen a number of corporations accept the philosophy of TQEM and start the process of total quality environmental management with great enthusiasm. I believe that many organizations are attracted because TQM principles demand measurements of success and results that are definable for the environment. It reduces the emotionalism that frequently tends to surround environmental issues. Emotionalism has perhaps been the bane and boon of efforts by corporations and advocacy groups to incorporate environmental issues into the day-to-day functions of organizations. Abt Associates, a well-known research-based consulting firm, recently completed a study of U.S. Fortune 250 firms' environmental management programs. Abt found evidence that environmental performance is a competitive issue. Benchmarking is hotly pursued to develop firm-wide indices of performance. One third of the benchmarking is against competition, another third is against worldwide firms. There is a race to develop “Best in Class” standards now. E2M and Abt Associates have combined resources to study corporate Canada's environmental management programs and compare these with those of the United States. This research will help companies benchmark activities and will build a strong North American data base. Unfortunately it will not be ready in time to answer TQEM's question for this issue. (The study results will be released to participating companies in Fall 1992.)     

环境污染责任保险的美国经验及中国实践

环境污染责任保险是一种基于市场手段的环境风险管理方法,通过为具有环境污染风险的企业提供商业保险,从而为被保企业的环境污染及治理责任提供一定的保障,同时促进企业主动降低其环境风险。环责险在我国经过了多年的试点和推广,取得了一定成绩,但是也面临许多困难。本文借鉴环责险在美国发展的经验,识别环责险市场发展的条件,同时评价我国环责险市场发展是否具备这些条件,并为进一步促进环责险发展提供建议。     

国内外工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制标准研究

工业企业颗粒物无组织排放是环境空气中颗粒物的主要来源之一。长期以来,由于我国工业生产粗放型发展,环境管理不够精细,企业重视程度不够,从而导致颗粒物无组织排放问题越发突出,严重影响了我国大气环境质量的根本改善。工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制标准是我国大气污染物排放标准体系的重要组成部分,亦是颗粒物无组织排放管理和执法监管的重要技术依据。了解国内外当前工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制标准的发展现状、体系特点及存在的问题,有助于科学指导我国工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制标准的制定。本文系统研究了中国、美国、德国和日本的工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制法规及标准,通过对比分析,指出了我国工业源颗粒物无组织排放控制标准存在的问题,并提出完善标准的建议,为优化我国现行大气污染物排放标准体系、深化颗粒物污染防治和管理提供参考依据。