title: Adaptive management: a paradigm for remediation of public facilities
creator: Janecky, David R
creator: Whicker, Jeffrey J
creator: Doerr, Ted B
contributor: United States. Department of Energy.
publisher: Los Alamos National Laboratory
date: 2009-01-01
language: English
description: Public facility restoration planning traditionally focused on
 response to natural disasters and hazardous materials accidental releases.
 These plans now need to integrate response to terrorist actions. Therefore,
 plans must address a wide range of potential vulnerabilities. Similar types of
 broad remediation planning are needed for restoration of waste and hazardous
 material handling areas and facilities. There are strong similarities in
 damage results and remediation activities between unintentional and terrorist
 actions; however, the uncertainties associated with terrorist actions result
 in a re-evaluation of approaches to planning. Restoration of public facilities
 following a release of a hazardous material is inherently far more complex
 than in confined industrial settings and has many unique technical, economic,
 social, and political challenges. Therefore, they arguably involve a superset
 of drivers, concerns and public agencies compared to other restoration
 efforts. This superset of conditions increases complexity of interactions,
 reduces our knowledge of the initial conditions, and even condenses the
 timeline for restoration response. Therefore, evaluations of alternative
 restoration management approaches developed for responding to terrorist
 actions provide useful knowledge for large, complex waste management projects.
 Whereas present planning documents have substantial linearity in their
 organization, the 'adaptive management' paradigm provides a constructive
 parallel operations paradigm for restoration of facilities that anticipates
 and plans for uncertainty, multiple/simUltaneous public agency actions, and
 stakeholder participation. Adaptive management grew out of the need to manage
 and restore natural resources in highly complex and changing environments with
 limited knowledge about causal relationships and responses to restoration
 actions. Similarities between natural resource management and restoration of a
 facility and surrounding area(s) after a disruptive event suggest numerous
 advantages over preset linearly-structured plans by incorporating the
 flexibility and overlap of processes inherent in effective facility
 restoration. We discuss three restoration case studies (e.g., the Hart Senate
 Office Building anthrax restoration, Rocky Flats actinide remediation, and
 hurricane destruction restoration), that implement aspects of adaptive
 management but not a formal approach. We propose that more formal adoption of
 adaptive management principles could be a basis for more flexible standards to
 improve site-specific remediation plans under conditions of high uncertainty.
subject: Management
subject: Biological Recovery
subject: Waste Management
subject: Interactions
subject: Actinides
subject: Resource Management
subject: Remedial Action
subject: Damage
subject: Wastes
subject: 99
subject: Natural Disasters
subject: Planning
subject: Flexibility
subject: Hurricanes
subject: Office Buildings
subject: Resources
subject: Hazardous Materials
source: Waste Management 2009 ; March 1, 2009 ; Phoenix, AZ
type: Article
format: Text
identifier: rep-no: LA-UR-09-00416
identifier: rep-no: LA-UR-09-416
identifier: grantno: AC52-06NA25396
identifier: osti: 956547
identifier: https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc930172/
identifier: ark: ark:/67531/metadc930172