EPREP: Environmental Preparedness and Resilience Empowering People

Oregon State University researchers were among the first to conduct environmental sampling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Partnering with community groups, university researchers organized a workshop for... [ view full abstract ]

Oregon State University researchers were among the first to conduct environmental sampling in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Partnering with community groups, university researchers organized a workshop for community stake holders, researchers and policymakers to assess the response to this environmental disaster. Impacted communities related the need for better pre-event planning and post-disaster environmental assessments that included community input, and improved communication of the results from environmental exposure sampling. In response to these community-identified needs, Environmental Preparedness and Resilience Empowering People (EPREP) was created. The goal of EPREP is to provide communities with a sampling platform that they can use. EPREP is accessed online and provides training in environmental health, passive sampling, sample collection, and quality assurance and control standards. EPREP will provide a mechanism to enhance neighborhood organization and resilience.

Pre-event planning, coupled with a trained cohort of citizen scientists allows for an immediate sampling response following a disaster. Sampling designs would be enhanced with local knowledge supported by expertise from the scientific community. Trained participants in EPREP utilize passive samplers to safely monitor their environment and contribute to a growing database of environmental sampling data. All projects will be driven by communities with an interest in evaluating their environment.

The influx of data in EPREP will contribute to a growing database offering new insights on environmental conditions pre- and post-disaster. This database will be freely available on the EPREP website, allowing citizen scientists to perform their own analysis and query the database to answer community-relevant questions. The requirement that all users obtain certificates in QA/QC will help increase traceability such that data can be used by non-governmental and regulatory agencies, resulting in better communication of environmental monitoring results.