Ecological Risk Assessment Framework

Importance of ecological risk assessment gradually increases for areas with planned and unplanned urban development and for unsettled areas. Especially, pursuant to national, AB and international laws, as well as improvement works and sanctions by laws, legislations and agreements for existing pollutions, the issue of determining the risk values possible future pollutions by scientific methodologies gets more importance day by day. Either methodological approach or points of view and priorities vary by every country in ecological risk assessment. In the Article, various ecological risk assessment models are discussed with their strengths and weaknesses.

Science of The Total Environment, 2011

The interconnection between ecological risk assessment value and economic development partially increases.Especially, to prevent the pollution according to the national and internatonal lawsthe improvement of the taken measures, the definition of sanctions in accordance with the existing laws, and value of the possible future pollution risks assessment by the scientific methodology and methods grows day by day. In every country either the methodological approachor point of views and priorities in ecological risks assessment are different. The article covers the different models of ecological risks assessment, their merits and demerits.

Integrated …, 2009

The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) convened an invited workshop (August 2008) to address coordination between ecological risk assessment (ERA) and natural resource damage assessment (NRDA). Although ERA and NRDA activities are performed ...

Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, 2008

The framework for ecological risk assessments has provided a way to analyze stressors in the environment. Despite the power of this tool to inform environmental management decisions, the practice has not reached its full potential. In this paper, limitations of the practice are described under 2 categories, namely inherent and contrived. Inherent limitations are constraints of nature that we need to be aware of as we design and interpret studies. Contrived limitations are impediments that have arisen in the practice through precedent or policy. The closing portion of this paper provides a series of short-term and long-term steps that could remove some of the limitations, especially the contrived ones, and improve the usefulness of risk assessments.

Environmental Science & Policy

Ecological risk assessment is often applied to guide the decision-making process that underpins ecosystem-based management and prioritisation of risk factors for management. Several studies have recently used ecological risk assessment approaches to identify risk factors of greatest concern, but rarely are the underlying methodological decisions discussed in terms of the effect that those decisions have on the outcome of the assessment and ultimately, how that affects prioritisation of risk factors for management. This study therefore evaluates the effect of methodological decisions involving (1) the choice and definition of risk factors, and (2) the calculation of risk scores, providing, where possible, recommendations on what should be the most appropriate methodologies. The definition of risk factors is often determined by the policy context and could result in the comparison of one broadly defined risk meta-factor (e.g. Food Production) with corresponding specific risk factors defined more narrowly (i.e. Oil and Gas production or Offshore Wind). Depending on the method to calculate risk this may result in a systematic bias prioritising any risk meta-factor. For the calculation of individual impact chain risk scores we compared weighted scores with ordinal scores, where the former allows more flexibility to represent the qualitative categories that determine risk and provided results better supported by scientific evidence. A consideration of different risk assessment applications in EBM showed there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this as these methodological decisions need to be considered in concert and the preferred methodology may depend on the context in which the risk assessment is applied. The outcome of the risk assessment should always be accompanied by an explicit consideration of these methodological issues and description of the resulting methodological choices.

CRC Press eBooks, 2000

BACKGROUND 2.2 RISK ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK 2.3 SOIL REMEDIATION 3 SWEDEN 3.1 LEGAL BACKGROUND 3.2 RISK ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK 3.3 RISK CLASSIFICATION. 3.4 BASIC RISK ASSESSMENT 3.5 COMPREHENSIVE RISK ASSESSMENT 3.6 SOIL REMEDIATION 4 THE NETHERLANDS 4.1 LEGAL BACKGROUND 4.1.1 Contamination of fresh water and sediments 4.2 RISK ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK 4.2.1 Environmental risk limits and environmental quality standards 4.2.2 Serious Risk Concentrations (intervention value) 4.2.3 Tiered Risk Assessment 4.3 SOIL REMEDIATION 5 ENGLAND 5.1 LEGAL BACKGROUND 5.1.1 Main actors in the handling of contaminated sites 5.2 RISK ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK 5.2.1 Assessment of risk to ecosystems 5.3 REMEDIATION OF CONTAMINATED SITES

2015

This study presents a comprehensive and generic framework that provides a typology for the identification and selection of consistently defined ecosystem-based management measures and allows a coherent evaluation of these measures based on their performance to achieve policy objectives. The performance is expressed in terms of their reduction of risk of an adverse impact on the marine ecosystem. This typology consists of two interlinked aspects of a measure, i.e. the "Focus" and the "Type". The "Focus" is determined by the part of the impact chain (Driver-Pressure-State) the measure is supposed to mitigate or counteract. The "Type" represents the physical measure itself in terms of how it affects the impact chain directly; we distinguish Spatio-temporal distribution controls, Input and Output controls, Remediation and Restoration measures. The performance of these measures in terms of their reduction in risk of adverse impacts was assessed based on an explicit consideration of three time horizons: past, present and future. Application of the framework in an integrated management strategy evaluation of a suite of measures, shows that depending on the time horizon, different measures perform best. "Past" points to measures targeting persistent pressures (e.g. marine litter) from past activities. "Present" favours measures targeting a driver (e.g. fisheries) that has a high likelihood of causing adverse impacts. "Future" involves impacts that both have a high likelihood of an adverse impact, as well as a long time to return to pre-impacted condition after the implementation of appropriate management, e.g. those caused by permanent infrastructure or persistent pressures such as marine litter or specific types of pollution.

Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 1996

There are several methods of environmental impact assessment (EIA). The method selected will depend on the background and purpose of assessment. This article provides an evaluation of a method of EIA, analysis of ecological risks (AER), as used by in an EIA study carried out to find and assess the environmental compatibility of route alternatives of a bypass road. The AER method is appropriate for identifying route alternatives and for assessing their environmental compatibility. Its transparency makes the results it provides very helpful to the decision-maker. The main objective is an analysis of a cause-and-effect relationship between the impacts of the project and the ecosystem. It considers the state of the ecological environment before and after a planned project. The approach supports geographical information systems application.