Grant: Engage Grants Program

The Atlantic Risk-Based Remedial Action (Atlantic RBCA) is a tool developed based on the ASTM Standard (PS 104-98) Provisional Guide for Risk-Based Corrective Action. Atlantic RBCA facilitates risk assessment and helps to estimate remediation targets based on risk for the petroleum-impacted sites. The Atlantic RBCA has been in use in Atlantic region (Canada and US) since early 1999 with increasing acceptance by all companies and overnment agencies for contaminated site evaluation and risk-based remediation target estimation. The deterministic values of the parameters used in Atlantic RBCA contain high uncertainties. The results of Atlantic RBCA based on deterministic values are debatable and fail to provide the required confidence to the users. Often to overcome uncertainties, users consider worst case assumptions which lead to an unidentified degree of conservatism. This often leads to unattainable remediation targets. On the other hand, probabilistic methods offer an opportunity to quantify uncertainties in the parameters and subsequently in risk values. The advantage of the probabilistic risk assessment is more reliable risk estimates consistent with the probabilistic nature of risk. It also overcomes the limitation of worst case scenario and unattainable target estimation. This proposal aims to integrate the uncertainty analysis using probabilistic methods in the Atlantic RBCA tool. The outcome of this project will be a tool that would assist in creating a reliable application of Atlantic RBCA and assessing risk-based remediation targets with a required degree of confidence. The end outcome of the Atlantic RBCA tool will be attainable remediation targets and efficient and economical remediation options.