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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2013

Climate Information Needs for Financial Decision Making

Climate Information Needs for Financial Decision Making (Final Report) This Department of Energy workshop award (grant #DE-SC0008480) provided primary support for the American Meteorological Society’s study on climate information needs for financial decision making. The goal of this study was to help advance societal decision making by examining the implications of climate variability and change on near-term financial investments. We explored four key topics: 1) the conditions and criteria that influence returns on investment of major financial decisions, 2) the climate sensitivity of financial decisions, 3) climate information needs of financial decision makers, and 4) potential new mechanisms to promote collaboration between scientists and financial decision makers. Better understanding of these four topics will help scientists provide the most useful information and enable financial decision makers to use scientific information most effectively. As a result, this study will enable leaders in business and government to make well-informed choices that help maximize long-term economic success and social wellbeing in the United States The outcomes of the study include a workshop, which brought together leaders from the scientific and financial decision making communities, a publication of the study report, and a public briefing of the results to the policy community. In addition, we will present the results to the scientific community at the AMS Annual Meeting in February, 2014. The study results were covered well by the media including Bloomberg News and E&E News. Upon request, we also briefed the Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on the outcomes. We presented the results to the policy community through a public briefing in December on Capitol Hill. The full report is publicly available at www.ametsoc.org/cin. Summary of Key Findings The United States invests roughly $1.5 trillion U.S. dollars (USD) in capital assets each year across the public and private sectors (Orszag 2008; United States Census Bureau 2013). Extreme weather events create and exacerbate risks to these financial investments by contributing to: • Direct physical impacts on the investments themselves • Degradation of critical supporting infrastructure • Changes in the availability of key natural resources • Changes to workforce availability or capacity • Changes in the customer base • Supply chain disruptions • Legal liability • Shifts in the regulatory environment • Reductions in credit ratings Even small changes in weather can impact operations in critical economic sectors. As a result, maximizing returns on financial investments depends on accurately understanding and effectively accounting for these risks. Climate variability and change can either exacerbate existing risks or cause new sources of risk to emerge. Managing these risks most effectively will depend on scientific advances and increases in the capacity of financial decision makers to use the scientific knowledge that results. Barriers to using climate information must also be overcome. This study proposes three predefined levels of certainty for communicating about weather and climate risks: 1) possible (i.e., unknown likelihood or less than 50% chance of occurrence), 2) probable (greater than 50% chance of occurrence), and 3) effectively certain (at least 95% chance of occurrence). For example, it is effectively certain that a change in climate will alter weather patterns. It is probable that climate warming will cause increases in the intensity of some extreme events. It is possible that climate change will cause major and widespread disruptions to key planetary life-support services. Key recommendations of this study: 1) Identify climate-related risks and opportunities for financial decision making. 2) Create a framework to translate scientific information in clear and actionable terms for financial decision makers. 3) Analyze existing climate assessments and translate projected impacts into possible, probable, and effectively certain impacts. 4) Improve climate projections with respect to precipitation (timing, amount, and intensity), extreme events, and tails of probability distributions (i.e., low-probability but high-consequence events). 5) Increase spatial resolution of climate projections in order to provide climate information at the scale most relevant to financial investments. 6) Improve projections of the societal consequences of climate impacts through integrated assessments of physical, natural, and social sciences. 7) Create a user-friendly information repository and portal that provides easy access to information relevant to financial decision making. 8) Create and maintain opportunities to bring together financial decision makers, scientists, and service providers. Near-term financial decisions have long-term implications for the United States’ social and economic well-being that depend, in part, on climate variability and change. Investments will be most successful, and will advance the interests of society most effectively, if they are grounded in the best available knowledge & understanding.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2012

The Information Needs of New Radiotherapy Patients: How to Measure? Do They Want to Know Everything? And if Not, Why?

Purpose: To establish 1) further psychometric properties of the information preference for radiotherapy patients scale (IPRP); 2) what information new radiotherapy patients want to receive; 3) which patients have a lower information need. Methods and Materials: Eligible patients (n = 159; response rate 54%) of 15 radiation oncologists completed the IPRP and provided background characteristics before their first radiotherapy consultation. Exclusion criteria were: age <18 years, having undergone radiotherapy before, unable to read and write Dutch, cognitive problems or a brain tumor. Results: Reliability (Cronbach's alpha 0.84-0.97) and concurrent validity (r from .39 to .57, p < 0.001) of the subscales of the IPRP were good. New radiotherapy patients want extensive information about their disease, treatment, procedures, side effects, and prognosis (mean scores between 4.1 and 4.4 on a scale from 1 to 5) but less information about psychosocial issues (mean = 3.4). Patients who are older and male, have lung or rectal cancer, more difficulty understanding and a higher trait anxiety level, need less information. Conclusions: The IPRP can reliably and validly address information needs of patients undergoing radiation treatment. Most new radiotherapy patients want much information. Yet, information giving should be tailored according to their background, understanding and anxiety.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗
DOE OSTI2023

Fuel Salt Information Needed to Support Safety Adequacy Assessment [Slides]

This presentation provides an overview of the information needed to support fuel salt safety adequacy assessment. It provides a discussion of fuel salt qualification and developing a mechanistic source term. This presentation includes discussion the use of total stored energy release as a means to bound potential accidents.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Information needs, approaches, and case studies in human health risk communication

This article uses ten case studies to illustrate the information needs, various communication approaches, and the communicator's role in explaining environmental health risks from a variety of hazards, to a variety of audiences, over time frames from days to years, using in person consultation, lectures, zooms, and email formats. Events often had a long history before the communication began and may have had a long tail afterward. Audiences may be public officials, companies, workers, communities, or individuals. Each individual may have their own understanding or mental model regarding the hazard, exposure, and risk. The communicator's role or intention may be to reassure an audience that has unrealistic exaggerated concerns or fears or to protect a client if the fears are realistic. Or it may be altruistic to inform a complacent audience to take the risks it faces more seriously. Although risk assessment research has advanced the techniques for communicating abstruse probabilities to audiences with low numeracy, in my experience, audiences are unimpressed by precise–sounding probability numbers, and are more interested in whether exposure is occurring or may occur and how to stop it. Often audiences have reason to be outraged and may be more concerned about punishing wrong doers than about the hazard itself, particularly when the exposure is past and cannot be undone. Thus, there is a difference between discussing the riskiness of a situation (risk communication) and what you are going to do about the situation (risk management). Risk communication is successful when the audience responds as intended, calming down or taking action. These case studies are drawn from a large number of risk communication experiences that I and my Rutgers colleagues have engaged in over the past four decades. Through the 20th century, New Jersey was the most densely industrialized State in United States. New Jersey experienced growth of the chemical and petrochemical industries and the unfortunately profligate disposal of toxic wastes. Having the most Superfund sites of any state is a dubious distinction, but New Jersey also has the most experience in evaluating and responding to these hazards.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Technical Information Needs and Regulatory Considerations for Front-End Transportation Activities of HALEU Fuel Feed Material

This report fulfills task order number 31310022F0033 Task 1 Assessment of technical information needs and considerations for front-end transportation activities for HALEU fuel feed material. This assessment primarily focuses on the transportation outlook and packaging requirements for transporting high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel feed material. The regulatory framework is described in section 3.0. In section 4.0 the specific issues associated with reviewing HALEU feed material packages are discussed. The rest of the report discusses the need for new packages and Department of Energy progress on HALEU production. Through this evaluation it is shown that the 5% enrichment barrier between low-enriched uranium and HALEU is a significant challenge to transportation packaging. However, there are licensed designs and concepts that can be used to transport HALEU feedstock. No significant issues were identified through the HALEU range up to 20% enriched.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2020

A template of information needs for decision-making about delaying remediation on contaminated lands to protect human health

The contamination legacy of industrialization, militarization, and nuclear arms race poses current or future risks to populations and the environment. Responsible parties and regulators make decisions regarding which sites to clean up, how, how much, and when. This study aimed to provide an information needs template to evaluate and reduce risks to human health when considering whether to initiate or delay remediation. This investigation focused on four aspects of timing and prioritization: 1) management, planning and implementation, 2) source terms, pathways, and exposures, 3) risks and receptors, and 4) external drivers. Within each type, issues were identified and described. Management class included personnel, health and safety data, funding, equipment, and structural integrity. Source term included contaminant sources, pathways, initiating events, and barriers to exposure. Risk included types and exposures to workers and general public. External drivers included regulatory framework, stakeholders, Congressional mandates, and economic and social contexts. Risk may increase over time as contamination spreads, enters aquifers, and reaches receptors, and may decline as radionuclides decay, and plumes dissipate. The overall objective was to provide a template of information that is useful to managers and regulators, and might be used by the public to understand the risks and benefits of re-prioritization cleanup.

Environmental Sciences & Ecology↗
DOE OSTI2015

Status of DOE-Managed Waste Repository Safety Assessment Information Needs

The U.S. DOE evaluated the need for disposing of only DOE-Managed high-level-waste (HLW, which includes DOE-managed spent nuclear fuel [SNF] in this report) in a geologic repository by using the Nuclear Waste Policy Act 1982 (NWPA, as amended) and stated (DOE, 2015) “A geologic repository for permanent disposal of Defense HLW could be sited, licensed, constructed, and operated more quickly than a Common NWPA Repository and would provide valuable experience to reduce the cost of a future repository and the time needed to develop it.” Based in part on that report, the President of the United States issued a memorandum stating that such a repository was required (see website with content at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/24/presidential-memorandum-disposal-defensehigh-level-radioactive-waste-se). This furthered the recommendation from DOE (2014) to “…begin implementation of a phased, adaptive, and consent-based strategy with development of a separate mined repository for some DOE-managed HLW and cooler DOE-managed SNF, potentially including some portion of the inventory of naval SNF.” The work in this report summarizes the status of activities within the Used Fuel Disposition Campaign (UFDC) to begin assessing the information needs for evaluating the safety of such a repository, considering both the waste forms being disposed and the repository concepts being considered. This report is milestone M3FT-15SN0824011 performed under the UFDC work package FT-15SN082401 to provide a status of the progress made towards this objective.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2024

Assessment of Technical Information Needs and Considerations for Front-End Activities for Molten Salt Fuel Types

This report details an assessment of the hazards and safety impacts related to front-end operations of molten salt reactors (MSR) as well as an assessment of existing safety guidance. Publicly available information was evaluated to make recommendations to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for guidance development and information gathering needs. Five different MSR technologies were evaluated along with information from 1960’s about the Atomic Energy Commission programs for the Aircraft Reactor Experiment and Molten Salt Reactor Experiment. Primary areas of evaluation include fuel cycle facilities, transportation and at reactor fuel mixing operations up to reactor startup. In general, there was difficulty synthesizing publicly available information due to the early stage of the MSR development and proprietary information associated with the reactor technology companies analyzed. There are a few specific recommendations from this report. One overarching paradigm shift that the NRC needs to evaluate is the possibility of collocating fuel cycle facilities with operating MSRs. Although there is no specific prohibition to this in the NRC regulations, the collocation of the fuel cycle facilities with the operating MSR presents a novel approach compared to the light water reactor baseline. More guidance and research into thorium operations and regulation is needed. The hazards associated with the stability of stored fuel constituents need to be evaluated. Some reactor fuel cycles use beryllium, and its use and the associated hazards need further analysis. NRC-approved designs for transportation packages for shipping molten salt fuels and factory-built and fueled reactors are not available.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Making a Water Data System Responsive to Information Needs of Decision Makers

Evidence-based environmental management requires data that are sufficient, accessible, useful and used. A mismatch between data, data systems, and data needs for decision making can result in inefficient and inequitable capital investments, resource allocations, environmental protection, hazard mitigation, and quality of life. In this paper, we examine the relationship between data and decision making in environmental management, with a focus on water management. We focus on the concept of decision-driven data systems —data systems that incorporate an assessment of decision-makers' data needs into their design. The aim of the research was to examine the process of translating data into effective decision making by engaging stakeholders in the development of a water data system. Using California's legislative mandate for state agencies to integrate existing water and other environmental data as a case study, we developed and applied a participatory approach to inform data-system design and identify unmet data needs. Using workshops and focused stakeholder meetings, we developed 20 diverse use cases to assess data sources, availability, characteristics, gaps, and other attributes of data used for representative decisions. Federal and state agencies made up about 90% of the data sources, and could readily adapt to a federated data system, our recommended model for the state. The remaining 10% of more-specialized data, central to important decisions across multiple use cases, would require additional investment or incentives to achieve data consistency, interoperability, and compatibility with a federated system. Based on this assessment, we propose a typology of different types of data limitations and gaps described by stakeholders. We also propose technical, governance, and stakeholder engagement evaluation criteria to guide planning and building environmental data systems. Data-system governance involving both producers and users of data was seen as essential to achieving workable standards, stable funding, convenient data availability, resilience to institutional change, and long-term buy-in by stakeholders. Our work provides a replicable lesson for using decision-maker and stakeholder engagement to shape the design of an environmental data system, and inform a technical design that addresses both user and producer needs.

Cantor, Alida↗
DOE OSTI2015

Insights from an international stakeholder consultation to identify informational needs related to seafood safety

Food safety assessment and communication have a strong importance in reducing human health risks related to food consumption. The research carried out within the ECsafeSEAFOOD project aims to assess seafood safety issues, mainly related to non-regulated priority environmental contaminants, and to evaluate their impact on public health. In order to make the research results accessible and exploitable, and to respond to actual stakeholders' demands, a consultation with international stakeholders was performed by means of a survey. The focus was on policy and decision makers, food producers and processors, and agencies (i.e. EU and National or Regional agencies related to Food Safety or Public Health) and consumer organisations. The survey considered questions related to: seafood safety assessment and mitigation strategies, availability of data, such as the level of information on different contaminants, and communication among different stakeholder groups. Furthermore, stakeholders were asked to give their opinion on how they believe consumers perceive risks associated with environmental contaminants. The survey was distributed to 531 key stakeholders and 91 responses were received from stakeholders from 30 EU and non-EU countries. The main results show that communication between different groups of stakeholders needs to be improved and that there is a deficit of information and data in the field of seafood safety. This pertains mainly to the transfer of contaminants between the environment and seafood, and to the diversity of environmental contaminants such as plastic additives, algal toxins and hormones. On-line tools were perceived to be the most useful communication channel. - Highlights: • We consulted stakeholders to identify their needs about seafood safety. • An on-line survey was prepared and sent to gather stakeholders' opinions. • Communication among stakeholders needs to be improved. • There is a deficit of information and data in the field of seafood safety. • On-line tools are perceived to be the most useful communication channel.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Multi-Sectoral Urban Interactions: Fundamental Science Needs to Inform Pathways to More Resilient Communities in a Changing Climate Multi-Sectoral Urban Interactions: Fundamental Science Needs to Inform Pathways to More Resilient Communities in a Changing Climate

Urban areas and the supply networks that support their resource use are inherently multisectoral systems composed of infrastructural, environmental, and socio-institutional components. These systems are vulnerable to accelerating and interacting stresses from climate change, population growth, resource scarcity, and land-use pressure at the same time as they have a major influence on regional and global systems. For instance, a majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, food consumption, and economic activity can be attributed to urban areas. Urban areas are highly heterogenous, both across and within cities in terms of their socio-demographic, environmental, and infrastructural characteristics. This heterogeneity shapes how urban systems interact and co-evolve and contributes to different economic, environmental, and health outcomes for communities within urban areas. Urban heterogeneity also generates differential vulnerabilities to stressors and differential capacity for adapting to change. The evolution of urban space is thus critical in shaping how human societies respond to global change as they seek to improve resilience to stressors, support prosperous and equitable communities, and use natural resources in a sustainable manner. Developing fundamental scientific understanding of urban heterogeneity and system interactions across sectors and scales is critical for mapping the resilience, sustainability, and equity implications of alternative future pathways. On July 2021 the MSD Urban Systems Working Group organized this workshop to provide a venue for coordination and identification of shared objectives, research themes, and major knowledge gaps, as well as developing a shared strategy for addressing these gaps. This report summarizes the outcomes of this workshop.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2023

CHQ- SocioEmo: Identifying Social and Emotional Support Needs in Consumer-Health Questions

General public, often called consumers, are increasingly seeking health information online. To be satisfactory, answers to health-related questions often have to go beyond informational needs. Automated approaches to consumer health question answering should be able to recognize the need for social and emotional support. Recently, large scale datasets have addressed the issue of medical question answering and highlighted the challenges associated with question classification from the standpoint of informational needs. However, there is a lack of annotated datasets for the non-informational needs. We introduce a new dataset for non-informational support needs, called CHQ-SocioEmo. The Dataset of Consumer Health Questions was collected from a community question answering forum and annotated with basic emotions and social support needs. This is the first publicly available resource for understanding non-informational support needs in consumer health-related questions online. We benchmark the corpus against multiple state-of-the-art classification models to demonstrate the dataset’s effectiveness.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2015

Cyber-Informed Engineering: The Need for a New Risk Informed and Design Methodology

Current engineering and risk management methodologies do not contain the foundational assumptions required to address the intelligent adversary’s capabilities in malevolent cyber attacks. Current methodologies focus on equipment failures or human error as initiating events for a hazard, while cyber attacks use the functionality of a trusted system to perform operations outside of the intended design and without the operator’s knowledge. These threats can by-pass or manipulate traditionally engineered safety barriers and present false information, invalidating the fundamental basis of a safety analysis. Cyber threats must be fundamentally analyzed from a completely new perspective where neither equipment nor human operation can be fully trusted. A new risk analysis and design methodology needs to be developed to address this rapidly evolving threatscape.

CCE↗
DOE OSTI2015

Combined Sustainability Assessment and Techno-Economic Analysis for the Production of Biomass-Derived High-Octane Gasoline Blendstock

Conversion technologies for biomass to liquid hydrocarbon fuels are being actively developed. Converting biomass into advanced hydrocarbon fuels requires detailed assessments to help prioritize research; techno-economic analysis (TEA) is a long established tool used to assess feasibility and progress. TEA provides information needed to make informed judgments about the viability of any given conceptual conversion process; it is particularly useful to identify technical barriers and measure progress toward overcoming those barriers. Expansion of the cellulosic biofuels industry at the scale needed to meet the Renewable Fuel Standard goals is also expected to have environmental impacts. Hence, the success of the biofuels industry depends not only on economic viability, but also on environmental sustainability. A biorefinery process that is economically feasible but suffers from key sustainability drawbacks is not likely to represent a long-term solution to replace fossil-derived fuels. Overarching concerns like environmental sustainability need to be addressed for biofuels production. Combined TEA and environmental sustainability assessment of emerging pathways helps facilitate biorefinery designs that are both economically feasible and minimally impactful to the environment. This study focuses on environmental sustainability assessment and techno-economic analysis for the production of high-octane gasoline blendstock via gasification and methanol/dimethyl ether intermediates. Results from the conceptual process design with economic analysis, along with the quantification and assessment of the environmental sustainability, are presented and discussed. Sustainability metrics associated with the production of high-octane gasoline include carbon conversion efficiency, consumptive water use, life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions, fossil energy consumption, energy return on investment and net energy value.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗
DOE OSTI2025

An integrated integral projection model ( IPM 2 ) to disentangle size‐structured harvest and natural mortality

Abstract Body size is one of the most important traits governing individual‐level demographic rates and modulating population‐level processes. Multiple size‐dependent demographic rates can simultaneously change population structure, so distinguishing their individual contributions to overall population dynamics remains a challenge. Disentangling size‐dependent harvest rates from other demographic rates is critical for assessing the impact of removal on populations of invasive species. Inference about invasive populations can be difficult, however, as observations are often collected opportunistically as part of removal programs, rather than experimentally designed. Yet accurate inference is essential for understanding the feasibility of population suppression and optimising management decisions. We develop an integrated integral projection model (IPM 2 ) that leverages the strengths of the integrated population model and integral projection model to enable inference about complex, size‐structured demographic rates from imperfect observations. We apply the IPM 2 in the context of invasive European green crab ( Carcinus maenas ), a species for which individual body size strongly regulates both the observation‐generating process and latent, population dynamics. The IPM 2 facilitates the distinct estimation of green crab size‐structured harvest and natural mortality rates, parameters for which no explicit data is collected and that are unidentifiable in component datasets of the integrated population model. The model represents how the green crab population changes over time, providing the first estimates of size‐structured abundance of this high‐priority species. By forecasting the stable size distribution and equilibrium population size under varying removal efforts, we demonstrate that extremely high levels of removal effort can reduce the equilibrium green crab population size. Yet these high mortality rates also shift the stable size distribution and increase the equilibrium abundance of smaller crabs, since size‐selective removal alters intraspecific interactions. The ecological outcome of this shift in size structure will be variable, as green crab size modulates only some of its interactions with other species. These results highlight the value of the IPM 2 framework for inferring complex population dynamics with information needs that outpace information in individual observational datasets, providing a path forward for accurate assessment of conservation programs.

Keller, Abigail G. [Department of Environment Scie↗
DOE OSTI2025

Carbon Storage Technical Viability Approach (CS TVA) Matrix

The Carbon Storage Technical Viability Approach (CS TVA) Matrix is a knowledge framework developed to outline the information needed for geologic carbon storage. The CS TVA Matrix contains 5 categories, 14 sub-categories, and 47 components. This framework can be leveraged to assess the availability of data and information needed for a carbon storage project. The information categories of the matrix are tied to a list of required data using weighted mapping, published herein.

carbon storage↗