SMARTe a Free Tool for Revitalization

By Ann Vega

SMARTe is a free Web-based tool that provides information, resources, best practices and analysis tools for revitalizing potentially contaminated properties. SMARTe is intended to help users overcome specific, real-world obstacles to revitalization, such as developing and evaluating reuse scenarios, finding financial resources, understanding site investigations, and communicating with other stakeholders.

SMARTe is primarily intended to help educate communities that are not sure where to begin with abandoned or underused properties that have low market value and potentially high costs to remediate and redevelop. Annual updates are scheduled for release every October. SMARTe 2006 is currently is available.

SMARTe 2006 contains a collection of resources, data, best practices, links and case studies for successful revitalization. It also contains several interactive tools and templates allowing stakeholders to input project-specific information to facilitate various revitalization activities.

SMARTe 2008, scheduled for completion in October 2007, will incorporate user input into a decision support system so that different revitalization options can be evaluated.  Stakeholders in revitalization projects are encouraged to use SMARTe 2006 (available now) and SMARTe 2007 (available in October 2006) and provide feedback via the feedback buttons located throughout the site.

SMARTe is a project of the U.S.-German Bilateral Working Group. The Bilateral Working Group is a collaborative relationship between the U.S. EPA, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research, and the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council.

The group is working with “beta test sites” to measure how well SMARTe assists users in overcoming obstacles to revitalization. The group will also begin to incorporate tools into SMARTe that will encourage sustainable revitalization (e.g., using renewable energy, green materials and landscaping to improve the social, economic and ecological states of the area or region) to reduce negative impacts on the environment due to redevelopment.

SMARTe, by removing obstacles to revitalization, will encourage development on challenging, abandoned and/or underused sites so that unspoiled areas can be preserved in their natural states. BFN

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