Integrated Regional Model

This project proposes to advance the science and application of integrated social and environmental models by developing and exercising a suite of models designed to explore issues of sustainability in the Baltimore–Washington region. Toward these ends, the project will build on an  existing modeling framework and institutional relationships developed over decades by the National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) at the University of Maryland (UMD), the Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC, also UMD), and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Eastern Geographic Science Center (EGSC) to form an integrated and cutting edge modeling system. Integrating these systems means to better represent complex interactions observed empirically between land use, environment, economy, and transportation.

The proposed work includes three principal tasks:

1. enhancing NCSG’s Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) by integrating travel demand with demographics, household relocation, environmental impacts, and economic models,
2. integrating the MSTM with EGSC’s Land Cover Change Model of the Chesapeake Bay Modeling system (CBLCM), and
3. integrating the MSTM with ESSIC’s Climate Change Model, the backbone to the natural systems component.

Multiple agencies at the federal, state, and local level have an interest in these linkages, including the US EPA, Department of the Interior, the Maryland Departments of Transportation, Environment, Natural Resources, and Planning. From a scientific perspective, this project will improve our understanding of human activity–environmental linkages and enable improved policy development dealing with environmental sustainability.