Advanced Monitoring Technology:  Opportunities and Challenges.  A Path Forward for EPA, States, and Tribes notes that new advanced monitoring technology presents a tremendous opportunity for improving our understanding of environmental conditions, ensuring environmental compliance, and for effective environmental management at regulated facilities.  At the same time, whether used by citizens or agencies, new technologies also create challenges relating to data accuracy and interpretation.  Furthermore, data standards must be developed to allow for more accurate use of data from these technologies.  This article describes how EPA and state and tribal agencies are working together under E-Enterprise for the Environment to address these challenges, in five ways:  

1. evaluating the feasibility of an independent third-party program to evaluate new sensors;
2. developing a process to rapidly assess appropriateness of new technologies for specific purposes;
3. developing context and helping users better understand data from new technologies;
4. developing uniform data standards, including metadata and data quality descriptions, for data transmission so users can better understand how data was gathered; and
5. simplifying the regulatory approval process for new monitoring methods

The article, Advanced Monitoring Technology:  Opportunities and Challenges.  A Path Forward for EPA, States, and Tribes, is republished from the November 2016 issue of EM Magazine, a copyrighted publication of the Air & Waste Management Association. Exit

• Advanced Monitoring Technology: Opportunities and Challenges. A Path Forward for EPA, States, and Tribes (PDF)(6 pp, 622 K)