Risk Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis: A Framework for Managing Complex Environmental Challenges

December 5, 2004 — Palm Springs, California

Continuing Education Workshop Announcement.

About the Event

Decision-making in environmental projects is typically a complex and confusing exercise, characterized by trade-offs between socio-political, environmental, and economic impacts. Cost-benefit analyses (CBA) are often used, occasionally in concert with comparative risk assessment, to choose between competing alternatives. However, assessment of remedial, abatement and land-use policies for contaminated sites involves multiple criteria such as cost, benefit, environmental impact, safety, and risk that may not be easily condensed into a single monetary value. Consequently, alternatives or trade-offs may be incomparable on a CBA basis. Even in cases where it is possible to convert multiple criteria into a common single unit, this approach would not always be desirable because competing or mutually exclusive stakeholder group preferences may be lost in the decision process. The overall effect is to foster a defensive decision making culture among government agencies and private firms that may be slow to adopt or test new environmental technologies such as beneficial reuse of contaminated sediments or in-situ treatments.

As an alternative to CBA, multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) offer scientific and theoretically sound analytical decision methods. Recent workshops of federal stakeholders (US Army Corps of Engineers, EPA, NOAA) have constructed basic frameworks that are applicable to environmental projects dealing with contaminated and disturbed sites where risk assessment and stakeholder participation are of crucial concern. This workshop will provide an interdisciplinary perspective of CRA and MCDA methods for the assessment of novel contaminated sediment management technologies in the context of public stakeholder values. Participants learn a basic overview of CRA and MCDA techniques and tools with some time allowed for work/consultation on specific issues of concern to participants.

Lecturers: Igor Linkov, PhD, Cambridge Environmental Inc
Gregory Kiker, PhD, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center

NOTE: This workshop will be held in conjunction with the meetings listed below. You can register for the workshop only, you do not need to register for the meetings to attend the workshop. Please contact Igor Linkov (Linkov@CambridgeEnvironmental.com) if you like to receive more detailed information.

14 November 2004, Portland, OR
Fourth SETAC world Congress
http://www.setac.org/portland.html

5 December 2004, Palm Springs, CA
Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) Annual Meeting
http://www.sra.org/events_2004_meeting.php

24 January 2004, New Orleans, Louisiana
Third International Conference on remediation of Contaminated Sediments
http://www.battelle.org/environment/er/conferences/sedimentscon/short.stm