To access potential lead contamination at former small arms firing ranges, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District and Montgomery Watson integrated Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) in a site investigation at the Presidio of San Francisco, California. AutoCAD and GIS were used to digitize site boundaries from historic maps. GIS and GPS were used to identify and stake the former target range boundaries and sample collection points. GPS was also used to map sample locations and current site features which may affect remedial actions. Finally, GIS and solids modeling were utilized to determine the vertical and lateral extent of lead contamination at the former firing ranges.
This paper describes the Simulated Site Interactive Training Environment (SimSITE) system. SimSITE allows a user to participate in a simulated investigation of an artificial hazardous waste site using systematic planning and assessment methodologies endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. As part of a one-day training course on environmental data collection, users browse the artificial site, find historical information about potential causes of environmental contamination, develop data quality objectives, and choose a sampling design. The system uses statistical techniques to calculate concentration values that reflect real-world sampling and analytical measurement errors. The user can then evaluate the results of the chosen sampling design in relation to the underlying 'true' concentration data, also provided by the system, to determine whether the sampling approach succeeded in meeting the data quality objectives. The design and implementation of SimSITE are discussed along with "Lessons Learned" in developing simulation software using ArcView.
The management of sampling data after its collection and before its used is a key and enormous task in site management. This is especially true for critical Superfund sites where there are strict regulations an client confidentiality are involved since these points make the data sensitive as well as voluminous. Another complicating factor is that generally the tools required for this type of data management are powerful computing tools and that traditionally has equated to expensive and hard to run computer tools. The basic limitation to being able to do this type of work on a desk top has been that of storage and computational power. However, today with disk capacities available for PCs being measured in tens of Gigabytes and processing speeds reaching 200 MHz, it is now possible to deal with fairly sizable data using manageable desktop software and hardware. Brown and Caldwell has been building environmental data management systems for our clients for many years but recently we applied a desktop solution to an important east coast Superfund site based on ArcCAD, ArcView and a couple of other software products which proved that one can have easy to use environmental data management and analysis systems on a desktop. This paper would detail out how ArcCAD and ArcView can be used as the geographic platform from which large amounts of site data can be managed as well as project specific application results while staying tuned to the sensitive nature of the client information involved. A specific project we will present on is a LCP Chemical Superfund site in Brunswick, Georgia. Other PRPs on this site include, ARCO Oil, Allied Signal, and Georgia Power and Light. This is a 500 acre site which is contaminated with petroleum waste and mercury. The site served many years as a petroleum refinery and a mercury retort. The data management system applied to this site was built to handle over 400 sampling locations and primarily ran on ArcCAD and ArcView.
Eastern Michigan University, in conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) is developing a desktop GIS system for managing, analyzing, and visualizing contaminated sediments in tributaries, harbors, and coastal zones of the Great Lakes. The system is designed to meet challenges for a common database and a set of versatile analytical tools to support navigation channel dredging programs and pollution prevention actions for multi-government agencies. The system is built on top of Esri's ArcView 2.1, customized Avenue scripts, specialized windows C++ modules, and remote procedure calls to ArcInfo. It applies the technology of "expert system" to integrate administrative and professional intelligence with the "technical capacity" of ArcView 2.1. It has a built-in "machine learning" mechanism to enable users to accumulate knowledge or obtain insights from past system experience for formulating analytical tasks. With these innovations, the system provides powerful analytical tools and flexible query builders for examining pollution issues under various scenarios. The system also incorporates the notions of "spatial data transfer standards" and "meta-data" to guide the conversion of data sources of other formats to ArcInfo coverages and symbol palettes. This conversion module is an integrated component of the desktop GIS system through remote procedure calls. In addition, the system includes an Avenue customized data-entry module to facilitate on-site field sampling. This data-entry recognizes the database structure, transfers common information (key table fields) to relevant tables, and automatically leads users to next appropriate table on the hierarchy after data entry is done for a table. Moreover, some of these data entry fields are compulsory, while others can be filled out in great detail at a later time as warranted. The system is also an all-purpose visual machine to support large scale (1:6,000) multi-media display of maps, images, photos, graphics and drawings for exploring environmental impacts of contaminated sediments, including hydrology, transportation, hypsography, and land use.