The Interdisciplinary Network on Cumulative Impact Technical Engagement (INCITE) seeks to advance methods of assessing cumulative health, environmental, and pollution burdens in disadvantaged communities through an interdisciplinary approach. One of the longstanding challenges to achieving environmental justice is that government agencies traditionally do not account for the cumulative burdens and impacts that communities face in deciding whether to build, permit, and regulate individual facilities and land uses. Our focus will be to help develop and evaluate methodologies for cumulative impact assessment in order to advance the use of these methods in decision-making processes, such as reviews of proposed projects. One component of INCITE’s work will be to support efforts to ensure robust and effective implementation of new laws in New Jersey and New York that require cumulative impact analysis.

INCITE will engage researchers across the University in public health, law, climate science, urban planning, engineering, and public policy, and build partnerships with key external stakeholders. We will provide expertise and advice to environmental justice communities and to policy- and law-makers as they implement recent groundbreaking cumulative impact laws.