Lesson 4 ODOTBest Practices

Best Practices

Our Challenge:

• Best Practices for Action-Focused and Resource-Focused analyses are distinct

• Distinct best practices are not readily complimentary

Best Practices

Sources:

• Legal Decisions– key standards of judicial review

• Communities of Practice – handbooks – reports

• FHWA and IDT

Best Practices More Reading!

Fritiofson v. Alexander

Best PracticesResource-Focused

The Fritiofson v. Alexander Five Part Test:

1. What is the geographic area affected by the project?

2. What are the resources affected by the project?

3. What are the other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable actions that have impacted these resources?

4. What were those impacts?

5. What is the overall impact on these various resources from the accumulation of the actions?

Fritiofson v. Alexander

Fritiofson v. Alexander

•Decision•Induced Growth•Affected Resources•Stressors and Limiting Factors•Sustainability of Resource in Space and Time•Mitigation, Monitoring, Adaptive Management

Best PracticesResource-Focused

•The Sierra Club v. Marsh Three Part Test:1. Confident that impacts are likely to occur?

2. Can impacts be sufficiently described and specified now to allow for useful evaluation?

3. If impacts are not evaluated now, will future evaluation of impacts be irrelevant?

Sierra Club v. Marsh

Best Practices Action-Focused

Sierra Club v. Marsh

•Decisions•Reasonably Foreseeable Future Actions•Induced Growth•Affected Resources•Overlap of Decisions and Resources•Resource Effects in Space and Time

Best PracticesAction-Focused

Best PracticesAction-Focused

• NCHRP Report No. 403

• NCHRP Report No. 466

• 2 categories of Indirect effects:– Encroachment-Alteration– Induced Growth and Related

Best PracticesResource-Focused

Best PracticesResource-Focused

• “Considering Cumulative Effects” Table 1-5, page 10;

• “EIA Components” blocks can and do match more than the “CEA Steps” listed in each row.

Best PracticesResource-Focused

Resource-Focused Community of Practice

• CEQ’s 8 Principles:

• “Considering Cumulative Effects” Table 1-2, page 8

• “Each affected resource, ecosystem, and human community must be analyzed in terms of its capacity to accommodate additional effects, based on its own time and space parameters” (item #8)

Best Practices FHWA Checklists

Best Practices FHWA

Technical Memos

Best Practices

• State Guidance:– IDT– CalTrans– MD SHA– NC DOT– TX DOT – Wisconsin

Best Practices

Key Points:

• Communities of Practice have published best practices

• Less than ideal word choices, some author confusion still exist

• Consistent theme … action-focus is part of input to resource-focused (risk to sustainability)

Best PracticesScoping

Key Points:

• Scoping is the collaborative process of identifying and prioritizing information that will be useful to the decision-maker and publics

• Focus in on possible impacts to resources for that may influence the decision

• Establish REC model, spatial, temporal parameters

• Investment in long range transport and resource management plans pay off here

Best PracticesScoping

For All Steps, Define and Reach Consensus on…

• Study Approach or Methodology• Sources of Data• For Field Work, Allow for Murphy’s Law • Level of Effort• Work Product

Results Must Be of Use to Decision-Makers

Scoping Identifies Useful Information

Exposure – Response Profile↓

Stressors and Limiting FactorsResilience and Thresholds

Adjustments and FeedbacksDynamic Equilibrium

↓Risk to Sustainability

Scoping Identifies Useful Information

Exposure – Response Profile↓

Stressors and Limiting FactorsResilience and Thresholds

Adjustments and FeedbacksDynamic Equilibrium

↓Risk to Sustainability

Thinking About …

How should we conduct EIA when the Resource is unstable or in a transition

phase?

Thinking About …

Is there a reason they call it Baseline

and not Basepoint?

Can a snapshot in time provide useful information?

Best Practices Analysis

Key Points:

• Determining the consequences is the two-part analysis of effects

• Action-focused analyses is input to resource-focused analyses, target is sustainability

Best PracticesAnalytic Principles

• Sustainability – Dynamic Equilibrium

• Additive, Countervailing, and Synergistic Responses

• Look Beyond the Life of the Action

Best Practices Forecast and Comparison

►Base line (no-action) forecast …… future conditions in the absence of the project

►With Project forecast …… conditions in future following implementation of the alternative►Often called “but for …” effects ►Two Categories of action-focused exposure-

response

Induced Development Forecasting

• Qualitative methods …… evaluate context or overall situation where little data exist or existing data is questionable or inconsistent

• Quantitative methods …

… model/search for causal factors

• Utilize forecasts by regional planning and transportation agencies

Best Practices Methodologies

• Literature review/comparative case analysis

• Scenario writing

• Trend extrapolation

• Expert panel surveys or Delphi technique

• Build-out or carrying capacity analysis

• Regression/econometric techniques

• Gravity models

Best Practices

Key Points:

• Communities of Practice have published best practices

• Less than ideal word choices, some author confusion still exist

• Consistent theme … action-focus is input to resource-focused look at sustainability

Best PracticesDocumentation

Key Points:

• Narrative sequence describes assessment and analysis, and discusses … – what we know– what we don’t know – the relative importance of what we don’t know– mitigation and monitoring opportunities

Assessment

Framework

Identifyand

model the RECf(x) = y

Identify the Decision

and Action(s)

Draw Conclusions

and Disclose

Implications

Assess Exposure(project –

REC interaction)

Deconstructthe Action

IncorporateFeedbacks and

adjustments

Evaluate Risk to

Sustainability (thresholds, resilience)

ConsiderMitigation,

Monitoring, and Adaptive

Management

Predict the REC’s

Response

Best PracticesDocumentation

Evaluation

• Issues– Communicating judgments, uncertainty,

assumptions

• Basic technique– Uncertainty and Assumptions– Sensitivity analysis

Best Practices

Which Fritiofson v Alexander criteria are best fit the scoping process?

A. 1, 2, and 3

B. 1 and 2

C. 3 only

D. All criteria