übertool: Web applications for ecological risk assessment

Background/Question/Methods

The integration of ecological risk models into a single interface allows for more efficient exposure, dose, and risk estimates under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA).  Risk assessments based on these models are evaluated when seeking the approval of pesticide formulations by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The model results are ultimately used to adjust pesticide labeling information, provide application guidelines, and in certain situations assess impacts on endangered species.  Terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric deposition fate and transport models are regularly run independently of each other in formats ranging from spreadsheet calculators to FORTRAN applications.  The results must be manually appended together across multiple different formats.  This process includes multiple iterations during the pesticide approval process adding to the cumbersome nature of using the various disparate models.  The übertool is a web application that integrates ecological risk assessment models in a cross-platform, user-friendly environment.

Results/Conclusions

The integration of the ecological risk models by the übertool results in a unified environment where data inputs and outputs are shared amongst models and saved for each user’s session.  This cloud-based approach of running ecological risk models takes advantage of budding web-based technologies allowing for the integration of disparate models and a persistence of model data previously unavailable.  Web services including Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services allow for the cloud computation of models written in a variety of programming languages including FORTRAN and C to simple spreadsheet calculators.  As web applications ecological risk models can be accessed, run, and integrated using the user’s web browser and operating system of choice.  The übertool can batch run multiple models simultaneously given the appropriate inputs providing an efficient and previously unavailable ecological risk service.  A new level of increased transparency in the pesticide approval process under FIFRA is achieved with the übertool.