PARENT SESSION
PW17 - Problems of Scale in Assessment of Contaminant Fate & Transport
Wednesday, 20 November 2002
8:00 AM to 6:30 PM
Exhibit Hall
(P907) Army Risk Assessment Modeling System (ARAMS): Associated Time and Space Scales.
Dortch, Mark*,1, Johnson, Mark2, 1 U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Vicksburg, MS, USA2 U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine, Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD, USA
ABSTRACT- The Army Risk Assessment Modeling System (ARAMS) is a computer-based, knowledge delivery, and decision support system that integrates multimedia fate/transport, exposure, uptake, and effects of chemicals to assess human and ecological health impacts and risks. The ARAMS is being developed to: reduce the time and cost for conducting site-specific health risk assessments; provide more uniform methods for conducting risk assessments with more reliable risk estimates; and reduce the cost of remediation by establishing more appropriate cleanup targets. The ARAMS is based on the risk assessment paradigm of combining exposure and effects assessment to characterize risk. The ARAMS uses the Framework for Risk Analysis in Multimedia Environmental Systems (FRAMES) for the system main chassis. The FRAMES is a modular modeling framework that allows seamless linkage of disparate models and databases. The ARAMS contains various tools needed for risk assessment, such as viewers, report generators, and a module for assessing probabilistic assessment. The ARAMS allows for both screening-level and focused (i.e., comprehensive) assessments and has linkages to Web-based databases to allow the use of up-to-date information for conducting risk assessments. It is being fielded in stages with new versions released approximately annually. This presentation provides an overview of ARAMS version 1.0 and presents the various aspects of time and spatial scales included in ARAMS now or that are being planned for future versions.
Key words: ARAMS, risk assessment, spatial, temporal