Integrated Modeling Activities

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What is Integrated Modeling?

Integrated multimedia and multidisciplinary approaches are increasingly needed to address our most pressing environmental challenges. Integrated modeling encompasses a broad range of approaches and configurations of models, data and assessment methods to describe and analyze complex environmental problems, often in a multimedia and multidisciplinary manner.

While integrated modeling is sometimes associated with the concept of multimedia modeling, the scope is, in fact, much broader. It includes “integrated modeling” of multiple pollutants and sources (stationary and mobile sources or point sources and non-point sources) within a single medium (e.g. CMAQ and BASINS), modeling multiple pollutants across multiple environmental media, pathways, and/or receptors, (e.g. 3MRA, Lifeline) and multiple ecosystem endpoints (e.g. Aquatox), integrating models across the source to dose continuum (e.g. MENTOR), modeling across different spatial and temporal scales and integrating bio-geophysical models with economic and social models (e.g. WEAP model). There are a number of different approaches to developing these “integrated models”, including developing modeling frameworks to allow re-use and static or dynamic linking between existing models and model components, or building an “integrated model” from the outset.

In 2006, the Council on Regulatory Environmental Modeling initiated a series of EPA activities focusing on the use of integrated modeling analyses to strengthen our capacity to address existing and emerging environmental problems. The following pages outline what has been achieved to date:

For further information, please contact Noha Gaber (202-564-2179 or gaber.noha@epa.gov)

Integrated Modeling Activities

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