Economics

Clark Labs for Cartographic Technology and Geographic Analysis
Developer: Clark University
Website: http://www.clarku.edu/
Description: Environmental modeling, risk assessment, analysis, image processing, decision support, policy analysis, change and time series analysis. It is based on GIS IDRISI project and spatial data builders with ten international resource centers.

Community Energy Workbook
Developer: Rocky Mountain Institute
Phone: (970) 927-3851
Website: http://www.rmi.org
Description: This workbook challenges community residents to ask new questions about how your community meets its energy needs. It provides tools to discover the economic and environmental benefits that sustainable energy practices can bring to local residents and businesses. Most importantly, it offers a framework for your community to begin to build a sustainable economy with energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Discount Version 3.7
Phone: (800) 363-3732
Website: http://www.eere.energy.gov/femp/
Description: Program computes discount factors and related present values, future values, and periodic payment values of cash flows occurring at specific points.

DISCOUNT is especially useful for solving life-cycle cost analysis problems that do not require the comprehensive summation and reporting capabilities provided by the BLCC program. DISCOUNT performs all of the functions of standard discounting tables, computing present values of future amounts, future values of present amounts, present and future values of periodic payments, periodic payments corresponding to discount factors.

Economic Renewal Guide
Developer: Rocky Mountain Institute
Website: http://www.rmi.org/
Phone: (970) 927-3851
Description: A guide for organizing and conducting a series of town meetings that can lead to your community's success in gaining a more sustainable future. This is a community development process that has been field-tested in dozens of towns since 1986. It is a practical way to approach development that integrates economic, environmental and quality of life concerns.

Federal Energy Management Program Publications
Developer: Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP)
Phone: (800) 363 3732
Website: http://www.eere.energy.gov/femp/resources.html
Description: FEMP offers a variety of newsletters, technology alerts and case studies. Information is included on reducing energy consumption in federal facilities, but the information is also useful to a far wider audience. FEMP also produces detailed case studies of completed projects, highlighting the successes of using energy efficiency and renewable energy conservation measures.

Green Developments 2.0 CD-ROM
Developers: U.S. Department of Energy, Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
Phone: (303) 275-4826
Description: Green Developments is an interactive CD-ROM that fully describes an exciting new field in which environmental considerations are viewed as opportunities to create better buildings and communities -- by working with the environmental instead of against it.

It features of 400 visuals, resource details, including financial details, and live web links to key related sites. You hear the architects talking about their designs, see how the buildings have taken shape, and listen to residents talking about their neighborhoods while viewing them.

Land Use and Community Alliance Service (LUCAS)
Developer: Pace University School of Law
Website: http://www.law.pace.edu/
Description: Provides over 4,000 pages of material produced by the Land Use Law Center for both community leaders and experienced land use practitioners in balancing the needs for economic development with environmental protection.

Location Efficient Mortgage (LEM)
Developer: Center for Neighborhood Technology
Phone: (773) 278-4800 x115
Website: http://www.cnt.org/
Email: hoeveler@cnt.org
Description: The Location Efficient Mortgage (LEM) is an innovative mortgage product that is being offered in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles to low- and moderate- income borrowers who are interested in living in urban areas served by public transportation systems.

PLACE3S
Developer: California Energy Commission, State Energy Office in Oregon, and the Washington Department of Energy
Phone: (303) 275-4819
Email: ken_snyder@nrel.gov
Description: PLACE3S and acronym for (PLAnning for Community Energy, Economic and Environmental Sustainability) is an urban design and land use planning process created to help communities understand how growth and development decisions can contribute to improved sustainability.

Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team Program (R/UDAT)
Developer: American Institute of Architects 1735 New York Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20006-5292
Phone: (202) 626-7442
Website: http://www.ncedr.org/
Description: The R/UDAT Process is a grass roots approach to community development issues: gridlock, loss of jobs, crime, unaffordable housing, vacant storefronts, unfocused suburban growth, abandoned industrial plants, new bypass roads, loss of identity.

The R/UDAT Team gives communities the tools to mobilize local support and foster new levels of cooperation. It joins local resources with the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of nationally recognized professionals. It's a highly visual process, identifying clear and accessible ways to encourage community change.

Request the publication A Guide to the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team Program: Planning Your Community's Future.

SCALDS
Developer: The Federal Highway Administration and Parsons Brinckerhoff, Quade and Douglas Inc.
Phone: (503) 417-1362
Website: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/scalds/scalds.html
Email: conradl@pbworld.com
Description: A prototyping model that estimates the full cost of alternative land use patterns. The EXCEL-based spreadsheet is called the Social Cost of Alternative Land Development Scenarios (SCALDS) model.

The model estimates monetary and non-monetary costs associated with urban land development. It builds on three areas of research - least cost planning which has been used by utilities for a number of years, full cost of travel studies, and cost of service/cost of sprawl research.

SmartPlaces
Developer: Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
Phone: (650) 855-2720
Website: http://www.epri.com
Email: pradclif@epri.com
Description: Smart Places is a tool for geographic decision making. SmartPlaces enhances decision-making insight in target marketing, economic development, land use planning, transportation systems, facilities management, environmental remediation and protection, energy forecasting, water allocation and resource control.

Smart Places is used to evaluate the implications and opportunities of alternative plans. It offers innovation in the planning process through interactive design, evaluation, and illustration of proposed activities.

The system runs on a PC using ESRI's ArcView software. Smart Places provides a user approachable set of tools for the exploration, design, modification, illustration and evaluation of alternative planning scenarios.

3-D GIS/Kit of Parts
Developer: The Environmental Simulation Center
Phone: (212) 279-1851
Website: http://www.simcenter.org/
Email: kwartler@simcenter.org
Description: Using sophisticated computer graphics and simulation technologies, the Environmental Simulation Center can simulate realistic images and experiences of hypothetical situations and projects, such as alterations to historic districts, proposed skyscrapers, new parklands, neighborhood plans, zoning amendments, and proposed transportation schemes.

An interactive three-dimensional "kit of parts" aids large cities and small townships, alike, in visualizing their communities and making informed assessments of regulatory approaches. Viewers can "walk" or even "drive" through simulated cities and towns and experience projects as if it they were built, allowing a close assessment of the project's merits and failings.

All of the findings are made available to the public. This allows all parties to participate equally in the decision-making process, and enhances the level of public debate in the planning and design of the built environment.

Watergy
Phone: (800) 363-3732
Website: http://www.eere.energy.gov/femp/
Description: A spreadsheet model that uses/water/energy relationship assumptions to analyze the potential of water savings and associated energy savings. The spreadsheet allows input of utility data (energy and water cost and consumption data for the most recent twelve months) and facility data (number and kind of water consuming/moving devices and their water consumption and/or flow rates). It then estimates direct water, direct energy, and indirect energy annual savings, as well as total cost and payback times for a number of conservation methods.

Last updated: January 30, 2004

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