| Abstract: |
Recently, DOE facilities have undergone many changes related to the
new environmental management mission. Stakeholders are concerned
how these changes will affect their communities, especially in
terms of the local economy. The REMI Model provides one way to
estimate these economic effects.
Seven primary regions were created for use with the model:
Savannah River, Hanford, Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats, INEEL, Los Alamos,
and Sandia. The eighth region includes eleven other major DOE
facilities. The ninth region includes the rest of the country.
Regions are defined by counties partially within a ten-mile
radius of a DOE site.
The REMI Model is a multi-regional economic simulation model. T
he model works by generating base forecasts for each defined region.
These forecasts are developed using historical trends of variables
such as employment, population and wage rates.
A simulation is performed by changing an economic variable in a
particular region based on a new policy or business trend.
The model calculates how the regional forecast would change over
time due to the new policy or trend. The model also tracks how
changes in one region affect other regions. In a sample simulation,
we show that a positive change ir. one DOE region leads to positive
impacts in the other DOE regions. We use this modeling framework to
study the impacts of changes in DOE spending on the communities
surrounding these facilities. |