Case Study: Argonne National Laboratory achieves fast, uncertainty‑aware integrated assessment of the Clean Air Act with Lumina Decision Systems' Analytica

Argonne National Laboratory - Customer Case Study

Argonne National Laboratory led a multi‑organization effort to assess whether the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990—an innovative tradable‑permit program for sulfur‑dioxide emissions—had delivered environmental and public‑health benefits commensurate with its costs. To support the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), a team of more than 30 scientists across 11 organizations built the Tracking and Analysis Framework (TAF) and used Analytica from Lumina Decision Systems to meet tight deadlines, link diverse disciplinary modules, and incorporate uncertainty into the national‑scale assessment.

Lumina Decision Systems’ Analytica enabled TAF’s modular, fast, and transparent design: modules developed by expert teams were linked via a public index library, uncertainties were expressed as probability distributions and propagated with efficient Monte Carlo runs, and scenarios ran in minutes on a laptop. The Analytica‑based TAF supported integrated comparisons of policy scenarios and quantified effects on air quality, ecosystems, health, and control costs; it brought together 30+ contributors, produced results for NAPAP and Congress, and continues to be adapted and used by Resources for the Future and others to inform air‑quality policy.

Argonne National Laboratory

Cary Bloyd

TAF project Principal Investigator