RPI led a large national effort to identify areas unusually sensitive to environmental damage in the event of a hazardous liquid pipeline accident, in accordance with pipeline safety laws on behalf of the Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) of the DOT Office of Pipeline Safety.  These include drinking water USAs and Ecological USAs. RPI developed complex GIS models to create USAs for the entire country, including all aspects of data collection, analysis, quality assurance, and final delivery of all digital data and metadata.