00:00:00:00 - 00:00:49:15 Unknown Our decision this afternoon and the next presenter will be Dr. Christian Johnson, well the Johnson family this afternoon. So the title of the presentation would be TRAC Tech as a tool for tracking groundwater restoration across multiple sites. And Christian Johnson has worked for environmental restoration and Remediation Technologies users at PNNL since 1992. He has designed and implemented multiple ex-situ and in-situ bioremediation systems for treatment of hydrocarbons and coordinate his tolerance. 00:00:49:17 - 00:01:32:14 Unknown And he is the author of RT3D. This is very common the Active Transport Code. Many of us, they know about that code and also develop the guidance for performance and end state evaluation of pump and treat and soil vapor extraction. He has developed remediation decision support software such as the Aquifer Injection Modeling Toolbox, Soil Vapor Extraction Endstate Tool, a Suite of Comprehensive Rapid Analysis Tools for Environmental Sites, and Tracking Restoration and Closure 00:01:32:16 - 00:02:01:00 Unknown Tool, which he is going to talk about in this presentation and this is for the Department of Energy. This is was for a contract with the Department of Energy Department, Defense and EPA. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. This floor is yours. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. So I've enjoyed the presentations so far. Been some good information there. This is going to be a little bit different. 00:02:01:02 - 00:02:25:20 Unknown There is no I in this, but I think this will be pretty interesting. It's a piece of software for the Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, and kind of walk through what it does and show you a little bit about this. Mm hmm. So we'll start out talking about why track is needed and then get into what does it show. 00:02:25:22 - 00:02:56:14 Unknown Like a little bit about how information is managed and track. And then talk about some future work and come up with a summary here. So track against tracking restoration and closure. It's a software name. This is a web based application, and it's really all about communicating status for groundwater plumes and progress towards closure for those plumes. The intent here is to consolidate some narratives and metrics and geospatial data into one platform. 00:02:56:16 - 00:03:30:08 Unknown Again, for the team. It's hosted on Amazon Web Services. So it's a cloud computing base that gives us a nice, robust, reliable and a cost effective framework for implementing this. We actually released version two last October in 2023, and it has some additional usability and feature improvements, some additional site data. And this is all part of the overall groundwater closure strategy that's ongoing. 00:03:30:10 - 00:03:57:16 Unknown So it's a some work planning and decision making about plumes. Plumes. And so why do we need this? Well, it does a couple of things for video. E.M. It really supports some DVM programs and missions. So things like the groundwater closure strategy as well as technology development programs, small business related research, and then MSA minority serving institution work. 00:03:57:18 - 00:04:27:23 Unknown It provides us it's a single portal for integrating and standardizing data between the M sites and organizations, and that's really important. This looks across the Dewey M Complex Insights and brings together that information in this consistent framework. All talking about this progress towards site closure for groundwater plumes. Again, it's really about communication. So it's communication between the headquarters and M sites, between the sites and their stakeholders or regulators. 00:04:28:00 - 00:05:00:16 Unknown And they're really in between sites, you know, promotes the sharing of technologies and successes. Lessons learned. If one site has a, you know, TCE plume, you might look and see what other people then in the M complex with those kind of issues. And lastly, it's important as a mechanism for transparency and engagement with stakeholders. And this has to comply with a programmatic environmental impact statement, settlement agreement that took place some time ago. 00:05:00:18 - 00:05:27:08 Unknown So where was DOE-EM. They used to have what was called the groundwater plume book, and this was where sites would send information to EM headquarters in a variety of formats tabular materials, Excel files, printed materials and headquarters staff would then have to compile all those and put together this overview across the complex and what's happening where in this plume book. 00:05:27:10 - 00:05:51:15 Unknown So from that we said, well, there's going to be a better way to do stuff. And track was conceived and developed to meet that need. Again, is this easy, easy used web portal. So there's really three levels of information that are available on track at the M complex level, a site level, and then a management unit level. 00:05:51:16 - 00:06:25:24 Unknown So I'm going to walk through those and the kind of information you'll see there. That's what the EM complex level. We see the map of all the sites across the complex data that lists the priority contaminants of interest and then there's some narratives. So the narratives I'll talk about in the EM complex and the Office of the Environmental Management, where the ATS, wherever they come from, just kind of given that background and overview of progress across the complex. 00:06:26:01 - 00:06:51:05 Unknown If you select a contaminant of interest, you can then see which sites have that contaminant and see things like Plume Acres. So you kind of get an idea of the magnitude of the issue at the different sites. And from there, you can start drill down drilling down into the site or the management unit to get additional details. So all the metric information on the left hand side here, it's that's about the plumes. 00:06:51:05 - 00:07:17:03 Unknown It's about regulatory status, it's about technologies. That's all at this level. It's all the roll up. So an aggregation or totals for these different metrics. So total area, total number of sites in using a certain technology and things like that. Right. So if you go down one level to look at a specific site, you get the same kind of information in terms of roll ups on the metrics. 00:07:17:07 - 00:07:45:13 Unknown Again, it's totals, but for the site online, not the complex against the plume, the regulatory and technology kind of information. There's the map view of the site. So here this is Hanford, for example, and it shows all the different plumes across the Android. And you have a set explanatory narratives that are different from the complex level. These are focused on the site, you know, what's the history where that was clean up and then what are the goals? 00:07:45:15 - 00:08:09:01 Unknown What's the conceptual site model across the site? Let's talk a little bit about technologies. And all these narratives can include not just tags, but they can include figures and photos. And then we have a and a video for pretty much all the sites here. That's it's a one on one series of videos, talks about, you know, what are the Hanford do? 00:08:09:02 - 00:08:18:02 Unknown Where did that Kevin Hanford come about? And kind of leading into where we are today. 00:08:18:04 - 00:08:39:19 Unknown So if you look at a specific contaminant at the site level, you get some additional options here. One of those is to see not just the plume footprint information, but you can see the plume animator. If the site has historical plume maps going back in time, you can look at those and, you know, step through that that time. 00:08:39:21 - 00:09:03:16 Unknown Or you can just run this as a plume animator. Here I'm showing the hundred H.R. three operable unit at Hanford and just selected a few different times 2010, 2015, 2020, just in the presentation here. But you can see how they went from a large plume. They implemented pump a treat as a remedy, and then that plume, a sense collapsed. 00:09:03:18 - 00:09:15:13 Unknown So the pump and treat is doing what you expect. So that's really handy just to see how things have progressed over time. Can you give me an understanding of what's happening at the site? 00:09:15:15 - 00:09:36:13 Unknown So again, we have the. And so at this level, when you clicking on the contaminant, you see number of acres for each operable unit, right? So you go from the complex, you look at the sites, at the site level, you're looking at operable units and kind of keep drilling down to that that upper operable unit of management unit level. 00:09:36:15 - 00:10:01:12 Unknown For more details. And so I would talk about related links and supporting documents. This is available actually on all three different levels. I'll just talk about it here. Related Links really gives a site an opportunity to say, Here's some additional information. Track is really it's got these metrics. It has narratives, but it's really about kind of summary information. 00:10:01:12 - 00:10:29:14 Unknown Where's the site at? What their groundwater plumes. It's not intended to be a database that you can download chemistry or, well, details. Right. But the related links gives a site the opportunity to point people to other resources that would provide that information. So this is Idaho AML, and they've got a link to the administrative record as well as the info itself. 00:10:29:16 - 00:10:55:23 Unknown But you could put databases in here whenever you wanted those related links. The other thing that you can put in here is supporting documents. So Idaho is selected to put in their circle of five year reviews so someone can go the supporting documents. They've got all the five year reviews here. You click on one of those, brings up the PDF file, and now you can read through the five year reviews and get all the details out of that. 00:10:55:23 - 00:11:26:07 Unknown If you want. So those are really, really nice. Again, it's bringing all this information together in one portal that people can access. One thing that we added in the latest version was this one page fact sheet. So this provides a summary for a site where it rolls up and has all the rolled up metrics here for the plumes, regulatory and technology information and has some of the narrative information here. 00:11:26:09 - 00:11:55:18 Unknown Again, track was really intended for summary information. Some of the sites that we put information in here, they put in a bit more trying to be a little more explanatory. And so this ends up cutting off some of the narratives just to try and fit it all in one page. So and this kind of thing can be useful for, you know, sharing with others or putting in a report in an appendix or something like that. 00:11:55:20 - 00:12:16:07 Unknown Another thing I'll point out that again, is available regardless what level you're at, but this is important for users as well as those doing the editing that I'll talk about in a little bit here. And that's a glossary on the terminology. So we have things like not just a plume area, but there's the plume migration status, what is that? 00:12:16:09 - 00:12:44:17 Unknown And things like as a contain expanding offsite impact. So the glossary defines what that those terms mean so that people can interpret what the information is. There's also some tooltips so you don't have to go the glossary, you get like a little short abbreviation If you over over these categories here. So that's handy. Just as a quick look and then you can dive into more of the details in this glossary. 00:12:44:19 - 00:13:09:10 Unknown So if we go down to the management unit level, we get some additional information. This is the base level or more detail, most detailed level. So we'll see contaminant plumes by management unit. So you select a that specific management unit. I'm showing MOAB here, which only has one management unit because it's a small site, but you get contours for the plumes. 00:13:09:12 - 00:13:37:15 Unknown So you see more details about the concentration distribution and you can see information on the regulatory metrics. So this talks about which framework is it used as a circle and as it grows or something else. And then there's a cleanup status where the site is put in information to say, for example, here they have a rod in 2005 and a Rod Amendment 2008. 00:13:37:17 - 00:14:11:11 Unknown So those indicate, you know, timeframes and where they are and some of that remediation process from discovery characterization through implementation and then eventually closure. Right. Where are they at in that process? And then you can click on those links and actually pull up the rods. So, again, if you want to dig into those details, that's right at your fingertips here, available to you on the remediation technology piece that talks about what's the status and with which technologies are used. 00:14:11:13 - 00:14:49:05 Unknown So there's a range of technologies that could be used for different contaminants, and it'll list which technology, which contaminants it's applying that for and where that, you know, has this been implemented? Is it working as designed? Are we done with the remedy? Where we at with that remedy or this management unit? There's some additional information for certain technologies, things like the volume that has been treated or mass removed, things like that on specific technologies. 00:14:49:07 - 00:15:16:08 Unknown So that's all the stuff that track shows. I'm going to talk a little bit about the collective content management in the ending. So how does this work? To put information in here and manage all this information. And it's really intended as a collaborative workflow. So instead, again, of folks sending a bunch of stuff in different formats to IM headquarters and having some of their staff try and compile all this together. 00:15:16:10 - 00:15:44:00 Unknown Every site is responsible for their own content and we have role based editing. So a site identify the staff who are responsible for entering information, the staff who are responsible for reviewing and approving information. And those people get logging credentials and they are assigned to whichever site. And also, I've got opportunity here. She's a headquarters, so she has access to the complex. 00:15:44:02 - 00:16:13:17 Unknown So she has a particular role in that access. And these registered users, again, they can edit the contents. That's the narratives, the metrics, uploading files for things like the regulatory status or or the supporting documents. And then they can there's a submittal somebody there's a submittal says, Hey, I'm done editing, submit information. And then there's a review to approve and then finally publish content for consumption. 00:16:13:19 - 00:16:44:02 Unknown So the this really requires minimal interaction for DPM. Again, every site's responsible for their data. It comes in and it's got the standard structure that they put in. So it's consistent structure across all the sites. The only kind of hang up with this right now is the GIS data. We have to have sites send that to PINNACLE as the developer of the software and we will add the Gastineau. 00:16:44:04 - 00:17:15:05 Unknown But I have an update on that a little bit later on. So, again, there's these different roles, your editors, amateur reviewer, authorizer. So depending on your assigned role, you'll see different, different look to the software. You can button show up. So you can see buttons here to go into edit mode. If you're a reviewer. You'll have an approval mode that you can go into and see what all the changes are and then approve or deny its use. 00:17:15:05 - 00:17:45:09 Unknown The approved tonight buttons. It'll show up. And then there's the final authorization. Say, Hey, we're good. Let's go ahead and publish this. So the software understands your role and presents an interface that's appropriate for that role. The person that's doing the editing. It's pretty, pretty straightforward to edit the metrics. We've got the different panels here on the left hand side, I'm showing the editing for the plume and contaminants. 00:17:45:11 - 00:18:09:10 Unknown So you select the contaminants and you just say, okay, you know, this year we're going to update this and here's the plume area and you have a selection box for the plume status and the source of groundwater, whichever category those fall into. And you can just go through each contaminant for a given management unit. The regulatory piece is kind of similar. 00:18:09:12 - 00:18:35:19 Unknown You select your management unit and you can just add another document that identifies where you're at in the process, what the timeframe is, which year, and then you drop your file in and upload that on the technologies. You have pick lists for the technology status, where are the ads and which technologies are being used. Again, if there are certain technologies, they'll have additional information requested. 00:18:35:21 - 00:19:15:03 Unknown This is puppetry, looking for how much water has been treated and how much mass has been removed. So you can add those details in here. Editing the narrative is kind of straightforward. Typical thing you might expect just a little editing box you can drop in text in here and you can add photos or kids or figures. You can do bullet points, you can put in links, whatever ever is appropriate to summarize the excuse me summarize the different topics here, your operational history and so on. 00:19:15:05 - 00:19:49:13 Unknown I think when the information is submitted for review, there's a pending changes page here that comes out. So this is intended to easily identify what has changed since the last revision. It should be the old values and the new values and you know, where which fields are being changed just to make it easy to see what's happened. And then, of course, you can look at the entire context as well. 00:19:49:15 - 00:20:14:13 Unknown Okay. So that's how you know what? It shows how you edit it. I'll talk a little bit about future work here. And one of these is, you know, I talked about this being part of the groundwater closure strategy. So that's a separate effort. But ties in track in that the groundwater closure strategy is developed, a set of end state metrics. 00:20:14:15 - 00:20:47:00 Unknown So track currently has like the plume, the regulatory and the technology information. But these in-state metrics cover some additional things. There's three different metrics that talk about engagement regulatory, stakeholder, tribal nation engagement. There's an end state progress where we at in terms of developing an end state vision groundwater plume control that lines up the existing plume information and just looks at the overall progress and control. 00:20:47:02 - 00:21:18:19 Unknown And then there's exposure control. So this this metric is going to get incorporated into track and plot over here. The sector plot will be included and it will have some uncovered tooltips that describe the different statuses. It goes from blue up to high. And so describe what does that mean? And of course, that will be in the glossary again to help people understand what is high mean for exposure control versus end state progress. 00:21:18:21 - 00:21:48:03 Unknown We're also looking to include some visualization of metrics over time. Right now, we don't have like a time series kind of plot, so we're looking to do that, incorporate those kind of visuals. I mentioned the guest files that have to be uploaded manually. We're halfway to a self-service GIS approach. We've got staff that have built up initial features to to process the guest files. 00:21:48:05 - 00:22:10:13 Unknown And I got to say, this is a challenging, challenging task because every site does things a little bit differently and they have different levels of experience. So it's a bit of a challenge to take it generically, take a guest file and process it and make it standardized for track. But we're halfway there and expect to have that in our next version. 00:22:10:15 - 00:22:35:04 Unknown We're also working excuse me, working on content integration. We have multiple sites that are working on their approvals, just getting their final reviews done. A couple of sites like Oak Ridge and LANL that are working on putting in information. And this year we're looking to add four additional sites that were kind of lower priority in terms of groundwater issues. 00:22:35:06 - 00:23:07:11 Unknown But for completeness, we'll get those incorporated as well. And then we're going to embed Green. You're going to issue a standard operating policy procedure that talks about expectations for updates. And the intent with this is really to do an annual update. Pretty much every site will do an annual environmental psych and report answer or equivalent and have information that they can pull out of that annual report and drop in the track. 00:23:07:13 - 00:23:35:05 Unknown So track is really not intended to be burdensome in terms of adding information. It should be existing information that people that sites can just pull and put in here and they go, what are the numbers like the categories for the metrics and off, off you go. We're also working GM is looking at a parallel process to the groundwater closure strategy, but for tanks. 00:23:35:07 - 00:23:59:07 Unknown So those tanks closure strategy would involve probably a sister application to track that. They would have different kinds of metrics and narratives revolving around tank cleanup across the GM complex. So that's something that will be coming and we'll have to have more discussions with the states that have tanks in terms of what the appropriate metrics are and where we head with that. 00:23:59:09 - 00:24:29:07 Unknown And then something probably for a little bit further down the road here would be to add some information on soil contamination and disposal cells, because those tie in into the groundwater. So I think that would go into this version of track or this this track, not the track tanks to trace source areas to groundwater contamination. So I talked about how track provides the summary information. 00:24:29:09 - 00:25:08:15 Unknown It's really intended to look across and complex and see what's happening. Complex wide helps identify which sites of particular contaminants and what's the magnitude of the problems in understanding where they are at the plumes, the regulatory status and remedy technologies. In this consistent framework of summary mixed metrics and narratives. Again, it's really about communication on multiple levels and provides information for AEM headquarters to help make them make some strategic decisions related to the groundwater closure strategy. 00:25:08:17 - 00:25:35:23 Unknown Where are the issues and therefore, where do we need to allocate resources and is it technology related? Is it regulatory related? Where do we go? How can we accelerate and improve our progress towards closure? And lastly, the like I've talked about as part of the cleanup strategy, the gun closure strategy had several different pieces of technical target site interviews. 00:25:36:00 - 00:26:07:07 Unknown There's also ALTEMIS, which I think you heard about earlier this morning, that ties in here in terms of long term monitoring for our sites. So with that, I have a bunch of people that are helping with this, Latrincy Bates, Skip Chamberlain at EM headquarters or the who I report to for this work. But I got a bunch of good people that actually put the software together and appreciate the funding from EM headquarters on this. 00:26:07:09 - 00:26:42:00 Unknown So thank you very much and I'll take any questions. Thank you. Christian the floor is open for questions for this paper. There is another paper will be also presented by Christian, but we will take questions for this presentation. I have a few questions from the online chat. They would like to know if they could get a link for the track and if the IMS site is open to external users. 00:26:42:02 - 00:27:11:00 Unknown So yes, So I'm sure on the links here and if you got your smartphone, there's a QR code, so track is available for public. As I talked about, there's different roles and different stages for the editing right? So there's draft information going to backup sites will identify staff who have login credentials. So there's log in is only for the staff that are doing the editing or reviewing and approving. 00:27:11:02 - 00:27:38:04 Unknown And there's different stages of if they're doing some editing, that information's in that draft mode. When information's been published, it's available to anyone. You can log in, use the continuous guest button and few minutes so you don't have to log in on the login page. There's a continuous guest and you can see the published information. We have a question from the audience here. 00:27:38:06 - 00:28:01:05 Unknown So, yeah, go ahead. Jim Cummings from EPA headquarters here. In your groundwater plume, a component of your database, do you have any information on the potential longevity of the plumes of the 600 or so pump and treat systems sites on the NPL. Probably 200 of them are going to be perpetual care. Currently, we don't have much of a prospect of shutting them down. 00:28:01:05 - 00:28:28:24 Unknown So that's a pretty important management data element to you. Are you able to track that issue in your system? Well, we don't currently. I mean, that would be something we could add at the at the moment that would be addressed in the narratives. So not as a as a specific metric, but, you know, good, good point. 00:28:29:01 - 00:28:56:02 Unknown I have a question myself regarding the in-state metrics. This is a very complex issue for the in-state metrics. We are looking at different kinds of contamination, groundwater, soil and others, and they vary it from one agency to the other. I think the big issue is if you can include the cost benefit analysis based on risk analysis, this will be really creative. 00:28:56:02 - 00:29:20:19 Unknown You can do that within the framework of the software that you are using. I know it is very complicated, but can you elaborate more about possibly what can you do in this regard? Yeah. So the in-state metrics that have been developed are really looking at progress for like the engagement ones, if they're low, if you're at low state, you really haven't engaged. 00:29:20:22 - 00:29:47:18 Unknown Right? And then there's various levels of how well have you engaged the in-state vision metric itself as kind of similar? Have you started developing an in-state vision or all the way through? Yes, we have an in-state tuition has been agreed to by stakeholders and regulators. That's the high level. Right. So those are the kinds of things that have been developed for these in-state metrics. 00:29:47:20 - 00:30:21:17 Unknown I think a cost benefit analysis could be could be included in a similar fashion, but probably, you know, a lot of the details would be where we put something in the supporting links or supporting documents or related links to, you know, provide access to more of a detailed analysis. We'd have to think a little bit about what the best kind of metrics are for that. 00:30:21:19 - 00:30:46:14 Unknown So but it could certainly be included. And an interesting idea, the metrics for different regions, it could go from top to bottom, bottom top. So for example, if they start with ten to the minus six, this is the goal and you look at the condition and then after that you look at that and said practically, what can you do? 00:30:46:16 - 00:31:11:08 Unknown Other agencies, they look at more the this is the line that you need to comply with and you use aclara in addition to that. So it is not that straightforward when you look at the metrics. So depending on size, specifics and pathway analysis depends on many factors. Right. And it's something you know, this was built for Office of Environmental Management degree. 00:31:11:10 - 00:31:49:12 Unknown So it has that context in mind. I think the software, the kind of the approach could be applied for other agencies. But you're right, there probably have to be some adjustments in and, you know, assumptions that were made and expectations for those different contexts. But, you know, this is a really nice tool just to get that broad picture of where things at across an organization or entity such as do we thank you anymore? 00:31:49:14 - 00:31:53:18 Unknown Yeah, go ahead. I know there's no other questions online for Chris.