Risks and Decisions for Conservation and Environmental Management

by Mark Burgman

• ISBN13: 9780521835343
• ISBN10: 0521835348
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book outlines how to conduct a complete environmental risk assessment. The first part documents the psychology and philosophy of risk perception and assessment, introducing a taxonomy of uncertainty and the importance of context. It provides a critical examination of the use and abuse of expert judgement and goes on to outline approaches to hazard identification and subjective ranking that account for uncertainty and context. The second part of the book describes technical tools that can assist risk assessments to be transparent and internally consistent. These include interval arithmetic, ecotoxicological methods, logic trees and Monte Carlo simulation. These methods have an established place in risk assessments in many disciplines and their strengths and weaknesses are explored. The last part of the book outlines some new approaches, including p-bounds and information-gap theory, and describes how quantitative and subjective assessments can be used to make transparent decisions.

Author Biography

Mark Burgman is Professor of Environmental Science in the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
1 Values, history and perception	1	(25)
1.1 Uncertainty and denial	1	(5)
1.2 Chance and belief	6	(4)
1.3 The origin of ideas about risk	10	(3)
1.4 Perception	13	(6)
1.5 The pathology of risk perception	19	(5)
1.6 Discussion	24	(2)
2 Kinds of uncertainty	26	(16)
2.1 Epistemic uncertainty	26	(7)
2.2 Linguistic uncertainty	33	(6)
2.3 Discussion	39	(3)
3 Conventions and the risk management cycle	42	(20)
3.1 Risk assessments in different disciplines	44	(6)
3.2 A common context for environmental risk assessment	50	(4)
3.3 The risk management cycle	54	(6)
3.4 Discussion	60	(2)
4 Experts, stakeholders and elicitation	62	(65)
4.1 Who's an expert?	65	(5)
4.2 Who should be selected?	70	(3)
4.3 Eliciting conceptual models	73	(2)
4.4 Eliciting uncertain parameters	75	(7)
4.5 Expert frailties	82	(12)
4.6 Are expert judgements any good?	94	(6)
4.7 When experts disagree	100	(3)
4.8 Behavioural aggregation	103	(4)
4.9 Numerical aggregation	107	(6)
4.10 Combined techniques	113	(7)
4.11 Using expert opinion	120	(1)
4.12 Who's a stakeholder?	121	(3)
4.13 Discussion	124	(3)
5 Conceptual models and hazard assessment	127	(18)
5.1 Conceptual models	127	(3)
5.2 Hazard identification and assessment	130	(12)
5.3 Discussion	142	(3)
6 Risk ranking	145	(24)
6.1 Origins of risk ranking methods	145	(2)
6.2 Current applications	147	(2)
6.3 Conducting a risk ranking analysis	149	(2)
6.4 Pitfalls	151	(4)
6.5 Performance	155	(3)
6.6 Examples	158	(7)
6.7 Discussion	165	(4)
7 Ecotoxicology	169	(38)
7.1 Dose-response relationships	170	(7)
7.2 Extrapolation	177	(11)
7.3 Deciding a safe dose	188	(4)
7.4 Transport, fate and exposure	192	(7)
7.5 Examples	199	(6)
7.6 Discussion	205	(2)
8 Logic trees and decisions	207	(35)
8.1 Event trees	207	(16)
8.2 Fault trees	223	(6)
8.3 Logic trees and decisions	229	(11)
8.4 Discussion	240	(2)
9 Interval arithmetic	242	(22)
9.1 Worst case analysis	242	(5)
9.2 Defining and eliciting intervals	247	(7)
9.3 Interval arithmetic	254	(8)
9.4 Discussion	262	(2)
10 Monte Carlo	264	(54)
10.1 The modelling process	265	(3)
10.2 Kinds of distributions	268	(4)
10.3 Choosing the right distributions	272	(8)
10.4 Generating answers	280	(3)
10.5 Dependencies	283	(4)
10.6 Extensions of Monte Carlo	287	(3)
10.7 Sensitivity analyses	290	(1)
10.8 Some examples	291	(15)
10.9 How good are Monte Carlo predictions?	306	(4)
10.10 p-bounds	310	(3)
10.11 Discussion	313	(5)
11 Inference, decisions, monitoring and updating	318	(52)
11.1 Monitoring and power	318	(4)
11.2 Calculating power	322	(12)
11.3 Flawed inference and the precautionary principle	334	(4)
11.4 Overcoming cognitive fallacies: confidence intervals and detectable effect sizes	338	(4)
11.5 Control charts and statistical process control	342	(15)
11.6 Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves	357	(11)
11.7 Discussion	368	(2)
12 Decisions and risk management	370	(53)
12.1 Policy and risk	370	(7)
12.2 Strategic decisions	377	(6)
12.3 Stochastic analyses and decisions	383	(8)
12.4 Info-gaps	391	(8)
12.5 Evaluating attitudes to decisions	399	(11)
12.6 Risk communication	410	(6)
12.7 Adaptive management, precaution and stakeholder involvement	416	(5)
12.8 Conclusions	421	(2)
Glossary	423	(34)
References	457	(28)
Index	485