Distributed information organization and management for hazardous waste regulation compliance checking

Those businesses that generate hazardous waste as a byproduct of their activities must be aware of the liabilities associated with hazardous wastes and must also comply with a complex regulatory system. Information management among hazardous waste generators, waste treatment-storage-disposal (TSD) facilities, and Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA) are of critical importance for regulation compliance. Information management for hazardous waste regulation compliance is a distributed information processing task. Interaction and collaboration among different participants produces a complex information flow set and thus, invites a distributed yet integrated information management system to deal with it.; An in-depth understanding of the three major information technology aspects of the problem are necessary for building a successful information system for hazardous waste regulation compliance: (1) information organization and management; (2) a distributive regulation framework and its related information processing and interoperation; (3) an Internet-based information management infrastructure; and most of all, the integration of these technologies. Fundamental research as well as pragmatic prototyping is the key for reaching such a goal. The complex information management problem of regulation compliance offers one of many challenges to the inter-disciplinary research community.; Three topics are addressed in this research: information organization and management for hazardous waste regulation codes; distributed information and knowledge organization for compliance checking processes; and the interoperability of information exchanges among participants. This research is aimed at understanding the nature of the information management needed for hazardous waste regulation compliance. It investigates the important aspects of building such an information system from theoretical and engineering perspectives, and of building a prototyping system for the purpose of demonstrating a state-of-the-art model which may provide improvement for the quality, consistency and efficiency of environmental regulation compliance.