Start to concern about...
Why are we here?
Risk from individual chemicals and risk from contaminated sites
Risk to people from development
Risk to the natural environment from development
Risks of the uncertainty of nature
Risk associated with political decision-making
individual chemicals
contaminated sites
quantitative risk methods or qualitative risk methods are most appropriate?
component of risk (physical or biological contamination, financial liability for acceptability)
consequence associated with determining priorities for clean-up, containment or do-nothing approaches
degree of clean-up and the level of clean-up that is satisfactory
occurrence of a large industrial accident needs to be considered as part of an assessment of risk related developments
Bhopal in India, the LPG explosion in Mexico City, Seveso in Italy, Chernobyl in the Ukraine and Piper Alfa in the North Sea
quantitative risk, consequences analysis, hazard reduction
quantitative analysis of the risks of potential impacts from major development and their consequences for environmental protection
to allow a consideration of hazard reduction activities, a better basis for priorities for research and a better basis for priorities for environmental management
Does Australia understand the risks of changing climate?
What are the consequences of nature conservation and for production?
sovereign risk
possessing supreme or ultimate power
if risk not quantify, what will happen?
Approach
literature review followed by extensive consultation
to determine present
Australian practice and international practice
choice of appropriate case studies
search for a generic framework
History
1983
risk assessment has attained a certain maturity as an engineering discipline assisted by seminal reports from the United States National Research Council
1992
received renewed interest, Royal Society considered to update their original report
1989, 1993, 1994
Three books about continuous process of studying and refining risk assessment
risk communication;
toxicological and ecological risk assessment
risk assessment of hazardous air pollutants
1986
Health care risk assessment: guidelines for carcinogen risk assessment.
1993
ecological risk analysis
realisation that risk assessment can be used to determine environmental priorities
initiated a program, nowadays called comparative risk assessment, that compared the relative residual risks posed by a range of different environmental problems
Setting Environmental Priorities
why? Because uncertain about...
risk of permanent environmental damage
business risk of industry allocating scarce funds to environmental improvements
which turn out to be too far ahead of compliance;
risk of losing international competitiveness if Australia adopts (or fails to adopt)
new environmental policies.
agreement between public and experts?
Different judgement, different concern --> different priorities
Perceived risk vs actual risk
overestimate the deaths from infrequent causes such as botulism and tornadoes
underestimate the deaths from frequent causes such as cancer and diabetes
people rank based on...
How well do I understand this matter?
How danger it can be?
Can we control it?
Define risk space
The location of a hazard within this space indicates how people are likely to respond to it.
Why we need to know and state the uncertainty? Why not just ignore it?
Helps in planning
helps in understand disagreement between public and experts
Helps in future works that is referred to past work.