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GIS APPLICATIONS IN HAZARDOUS WASTE REMEDIATION

An electronic information management system (EIMS) can be an efficient tool to manage environmental data and significatnly reduce project costs. According to The Environmental Business Report, "Data management and analysis will become the environmental manager's most important tool," and "74% of environmental managers are actively using software to help manage the environmental function"(1995). The benefits of an EIMS over traditional manual methods include increased accuracy, reduced rework, and expanded data analysis capabilities.

Hardware and software improvements in the personal computing industry have enabled more people to utilize powerful data analysis and display tools such as geographic information systems (GIS), 2-dimensional geostatistics (contouring), and 3-dimensional presentations of contaminant dispersion. Visualization and modeling tools help portray site characteristics and are used to predict future conditions. Multiple data types are combined to provide a full-featured image including aerial photographs, utilities, parcel tracts, contaminant contours, land use and zoning, soil types, and digital elevations.

Black & Veatch has developed an EIMS, EnviroEDGE, to load and store data from laboratory electronic submittals, perform data manipulations, generate tabular data summaries, conduce data contouring, and display data using a GIS.

Key words: GIS, information management, databases, EnviroEdge