Essential To Good Planning
Impact Analysis helps you:
- avoid unexpected side effects after a change
- realize the need for certain contingency strategies for negative consequences
- better understand complex interactions between systems
- make best use of your modeling investment
- determine potential costs and benefits, in monetary and nonmonetary terms
- explore possible alternatives
- make sound development and policy decisions
Examples of impact analyses conducted using the LEAM land use model and other models in conjunction include:
- Travel demand using Cube Voyager-based local travel demand models and the LEAM land use model in back-and-forth, integrated runs
- Water quality using the Long-Term Hydrologic Impact Analysis (L-THIA) to provide estimates of mean surface runoff and non-point source pollutants
- Social costs using the Social Cost of Alternative Land Development Scenarios (SCALDS) model, an accounting framework used to determine the full costs of alternative land use patterns
- Environmental stress analysis developed by LEAMgroup to quantify the stress due to development on environmentally-sensitive areas
- Training opportunity model, also developed by LEAMgroup, to estimate lost training opportunities on military installations due to urban encroachment and factors such as noise, dust, and light pollution
- Air quality analysis evaluates regional emissions based on land use changes and projected energy supply and usage patterns
- Water and energy demand models to evaluate regional supply and usage patterns and analyze strategic intervention policies to move usage and supply to a more sustainable position
