TOWARD ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFIT/COST ANALYSIS: MEASUREMENT METHODOLOGY

This report documents and presents the results of a study to locate, describe, the evaluate the utility of research programs that use the energy-flow concept to measure impacts of man-made changes in ecosystems. An extended description was prepared explaining the concepts, tools, procedures, and applications of an environmental analysis methodology which is based on the energy-flow concept. An evaluate analysis indicated the methodology to be in substantial compliance with the majority of an extensive set of criteria that had been developed as a guide for evaluating any environmental analysis methodology. Some relatively few weaknesses were also identified, each of which is assessed as being remediable. Comparisons with 17 other environmental analysis methodologies indicated that the energy-flow approach may offer a significant improvement to the state of the art of environmental analysis. Evaluations of the potential for application to transportation planning showed that, in addition to complying with the universal evaluation criteria for environmental assessment, the methodology can assess single and multimodal transportation alternatives without unreasonable demands on data availability or analyst expertise and can develop data or findings which may be useful for a variety of transportation planning needs. The major conclusions of the evaluations was that pursuing the use of energy-flow analyses for transportation planning should be well worthwhile. Some aspects of the methodology were identified as needing further preparation for practical application in transportation planning; and toward that end, recommendations were made to undertake case-study evaluations and the development of an applications manual for both training purposes and daily use in agency planning efforts. /Author/

• Digital Copy:
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• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  National Cooperative Highway Research Program
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Lavine, M J
  • Meyburg, A H
• Publication Date: 1976-6

Media Info

• Features: Appendices; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 64 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Benefit cost analysis; Energy; Environmental impacts; Measurement; Transportation planning
• Subject Areas: Design; Economics; Energy; Environment; Highways; Society;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00148937
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: Project 20-11A Final Rpt.
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Apr 13 1977 12:00AM