How Do You Protect the Chesapeake Bay?

The Challenge

In need of more effective resource management and to understand both the cumulative impacts of restoration activities and degree of representative sampling required to assess levels of pollutant discharge, the State of Maryland and local communities required systematic management practices that would synthesize disparate municipal data into a single source of truth.

Exponent's Multidisciplinary Solution

Working alongside the Pooled Monitoring Initiative Chesapeake Bay Trust, Ģ��tv helped define best practices in stormwater management, and leverage an open-source tool to support resource allocation and capture progress on environmental goals through real-time insights.

- Our ecologists and environmental scientists reviewed two decades of data collected on the Chesapeake Bay watershed from individual counties to evaluate the past, present, and future impacts of source and non-source pollutants on the ecosystem.
- We used this data to establish metrics for assessing the potential ecological improvements that could be captured from changes to the area's stormwater management practices.
- Additionally, we identified areas where management resources could capture future benefits.
- Our team reviewed the existing hydraulic and hydrological information collected through the State of Maryland's stormwater management program, which is implemented on a county-wide basis.
- We sought commonalities among the diverse municipality data that was captured through the State of Maryland's stormwater management program and used this information to develop new sample collection goals that could be applied across the many counties by incorporating the data already available and filling data gaps where necessary.
- Using the insights gained by our scientists and engineers, and the development of metrics chosen by our team in concert with various counties and resource agencies, our modelers developed an application through the publicly available software application, R Shiny.
- We then used R Shiny within an R package, making it easier to develop interactive web applications straight from R. This app offered county, city, and state resource managers insight into their stormwater sampling management plans, allowing them to better understand the potential benefits applied to subbasin, watershed, and county-wide perspectives.
- Using this information, managers were able to cost-effectively improve their stormwater management programs through real-time assessment of the potential benefits of changing their applied resources.

Ģ��tv's Impact

Ģ��tv's work helped equip stakeholders with the data insights needed to protect this special ecosystem. Our team analyzed large amounts of pollutant data from monitoring in watersheds while accounting for their unique configuration and attributes. Through real-time insights and tools developed the managers, practitioners, funders, and others working to restore the Chesapeake Bay can allocate resources consistently, capturing cost savings — and environmental benefits. These efforts are empowering local residents, protecting diverse wildlife, and ultimately, helping to mitigate climate change.

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