About FrEDI
FrEDI is a peer-reviewed, open-source, reduced form model that rapidly projects the physical and economic impacts of future temperature change within the United States for a broad range of economically important impact sectors (e.g., impacts across human health, infrastructure, labor, electricity, agriculture, ecosystems, and recreation). EPA developed FrEDI to fill an important gap in assessing U.S. temperature change impacts, by both incorporating a broad range of impact studies into a common analytical framework, and by including functionality that enables users to rapidly estimate temperature-related impacts associated with any custom future scenario.
The FrEDI framework is implemented through the application of open-source R code, which currently draws on underlying datasets, sectoral impact models, and methods from over 30 existing peer-reviewed studies, including from the Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA) project. Data and results from these studies are used to estimate the relationship between future temperature change and impacts across more than 20 impact sectors, 48 states plus the District of Columbia, and different population groups within U.S. borders. When supplied with a user-defined temperature trajectory, FrEDI then applies these temperature-impact relationships to rapidly project annual temperature change impacts and damages through the end of the 21st century (and optionally through 2300).
Documentation
The FrEDI Technical Documentation, describing the framework and underlying studies, was subject to a public and independent external peer review, consistent with guidelines described in EPA’s Peer Review Handbook.
To view the latest version of the FrEDI Technical Documentation, see the EPA Science Inventory (enter FrEDI in the search field) or the FrEDI source code repository.
Archive
The following documents are previous versions of the FrEDI Technical Documentation. These versions are superseded by the current version of the documentation, linked above.
EPA. 2024. Technical Documentation on the Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA 430-R-24-001.
EPA. 2021. Technical Documentation on the Framework for Evaluating Damages and Impacts (FrEDI). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA 430-R-21-004.