Environmental impact assessments are required for a wide-range of projects throughout the world. The author places special emphasis on the types of issues that frequently arise in NEPA environmental assessments and environmental impact statements and for similar regulations that are used in jurisdictions regionally and internationally. First, issues related to current environmental impact assessment methods are discussed. Then, the book discusses how lessons learned from computational science can address these problems. It describes how a systematic, logical approach to environmental assessment can be applied to a variety of complex situations. Finally, a detailed case study of designing and implementing a more objective and powerful assessment is demonstrated. Explanations of fuzzy logic methods and discussions of helpful software are intended to benefit those people actually preparing and using environmental assessments--in language that makes the process transparent and transferable to all types of systems.

Autorentext
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D., is President of Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.

Inhalt
The Traditional Approach.- General Principles.- Scoping.- Baseline Conditions.- Alternatives.- Impact Assessment.- Writing the Impact Statement.- The Modern Approach.- Moving to the New Paradigm.- to Fuzzy Sets and Logic.- Environmental Conditions.- Impact Inference and Assessment.- Multi-Objective, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making.- Application.- Scoping.- Baseline Environment.- Project Alternatives.- Results and Conclusions.