Machine learning predicts which rivers, streams, and wetlands the Clean Water Act regulates.
Simon GreenhillHannah DruckenmillerSherrie WangDavid A KeiserManuela GirottoJason K MooreNobuhiro YamaguchiAlberto TodeschiniJoseph S ShapiroPublished in: Science (New York, N.Y.) (2024)
We assess which waters the Clean Water Act protects and how Supreme Court and White House rules change this regulation. We train a deep learning model using aerial imagery and geophysical data to predict 150,000 jurisdictional determinations from the Army Corps of Engineers, each deciding regulation for one water resource. Under a 2006 Supreme Court ruling, the Clean Water Act protects two-thirds of US streams and more than half of wetlands; under a 2020 White House rule, it protects less than half of streams and a fourth of wetlands, implying deregulation of 690,000 stream miles, 35 million wetland acres, and 30% of waters around drinking-water sources. Our framework can support permitting, policy design, and use of machine learning in regulatory implementation problems.
Keyphrases
- drinking water
- machine learning
- wastewater treatment
- deep learning
- healthcare
- artificial intelligence
- mental health
- big data
- antibiotic resistance genes
- public health
- health risk
- health risk assessment
- transcription factor
- risk assessment
- microbial community
- electronic health record
- convolutional neural network
- high resolution