Joint method development period in Kuopio in 2007

Joint method development period was an idea from the second annual meeting of Intarese. The idea in short was to get the key method developers from different institutes in one place for a long enough period to be able to produce and finish something during that time. The joint method developement period was organized by KTL and targeted mainly to SP1 & SP4 people, although participation was open to anyone interested. The joint method development workshop was held in Kuopio 12.3.-23.3.2007

This page contains information on the joint method development period and a brief description of the means and tools that are currently being used in applying the pyrkilo method in environmental health risk assessments in KTL. Please feel free to make major edits when necessary. Check also the links below.

Pages created/started in the workshop:

• Tools needed in Intarese toolbox - phases/steps of RA, methods and tools available/needed
• Assessment workspace (Intarese method) - description of the concept
• Risk assessment on airports - Kuopio workshop case study - case study main page
• media:Feedback from Kuopio workshop.ppt - Jouni's presentation to SP1 meeting 20.3.
• Kuopio workshop report - report from the workshop
• Kuopio workshop social programme - social activities during the workshop

Other related and useful links:

• Glossary of environmental health updated
• Category:First level scoping objects
• description of the pyrkilo method (a manuscript)
• Intarese general method
• Category:Risk assessments on airports
• DALYs, QALYs, Risk-benefit analysis from Wikipedia
• Risk perception – A short introduction in perception issues by Jutta Koehler, Vivianne Visschers, Ric van Poll
• Value of information review by Marko Tainio
• Bayesian hierarchical modeling review by Mika Hujo
• Environmental health planner for policy comments by Leendert van Bree
• HIA and DALYs by Anne Knol
• The Impact Pathway and Cost-Benefit Modelling Review by Peter Bickel
• Monte Carlo simulation
• File:Third-draft protocol exposure-health effect (1 3).doc

SP1 meeting notes

The SP1 meeting 20.3. notes have been moved to: SP1 Integrated assessment methodology

Method development period

The participating institutes from Intarese (and their representatives) were RIVM (Anne Knol), USTUTT (Alex Kuhn), NILU (Sjur Björndalsaeter), UU (Hanna Boogaard), IC (Clive Sabel) and KTL (Risk analysis group WP1.4 + air hygiene lab WP1.2). In addition we had Mari Vanhatalo from University of Helsinki / EVAHER project and Patrycja Jesionek from TU Delft / Beneris project visiting the workshop for a few days during the first week.

The aims of the workshop

• to familiarise everyone to the tools that are being used and developed for risk assessment in the participating institutes
• to identify possible overlaps, gaps, and interface mismatchs, and try to find a reasonable solutions to these
• to work together on a specific case study in practice with the existing tools
• to gain practical experience on the tools and methods and identify development needs
• to write a report about what we learnt for internal use in Intarese (or even for external use?)

Issues to be resolved

• What are the methods that will be recommended for case studies?
• What are the tools and software that will be recommended for case studies?
• Which methods and tools will be included as parts of the Intarese general method?
• Will the Intarese general method and its products be totally open access (General Public Licence GPL)?
• What is the most important output for SP 4 and the toolbox?
  • provide a workspace
  • maybe test out methods (e.g. for issue framing) in a draft environment while the design phase is still ongoing
  • We have collected all the necessary parts of an assessment and the corresponding methods and tools - this is a good basis for the needed functionality of the toolbox

methods/tools framework at the start of the workshop

The above picture was made before the workshop as an attempt to represent an outline of the available methods and tools to be used in the workshop case study (and in applying the Intarese method). This idea developed further during the workshop and the results can be seen in the tables at Tools needed in Intarese toolbox page.

The structure of the workshop

We started working on a practical case attempting to make an integrated risk assessment using the methods and tools we have available or are developing within Intarese. The case study topic was chosen to be Schiphol airport (air pollution+noise; air traffic+surface traffic).

The workshop participants could be roughly grouped e.g. as follows (duration of stay in Kuopio in brackets):

• core workshop team: Jouni, Mikko, Anne (12.3.-19.3.), Alex (16.3.-23.3.), Hanna (12.3.-19.3.), Sjur (12.3.-15.3.), Clive (14.3. evening - 19.3. morning), Mari (15.3.-16.3.), Patrycja (15.3.-19.3.)
• KTL team: Marko, Olli, Anna, Virpi, Eva, Miranda, Markku, Juha V (system support)
• local leaders: Matti, Juha P
• remote leaders: David, Erik, Marco, Gerard, Rainer, Aasmund, ...

The core team was working full-time on the case study during their participation within the workshop period. KTL team also strongly took part in making the case study assessment as well as participated in meetings and other discussions, but naturally were also involved with other issues beside the workshop. The local leaders took part in some of the meetings as were available from other duties and also held some other Intarese related discussions and meetings with the participants during the workshop.

The remote leaders were incorporated in the process by preliminary e-mail discussions on the case topic, a teleconference meeting on the second day of the workshop (which unfortunately failed due to technical reasons), access to follow-up on the Intarese-wiki, an intermediate report delivered to the SP1 meeting (+ feedback on it) and final reporting on the workshop. The lessons learned and other outputs of the workshop will be also presented in the SP4 meeting coming up in mid-April. Participation to daily morning meetings via phone was also possible and was made use of a few times.

Organization and working-hours

The organization table and working-hours table were out-dated and archived to history. You can find them following the link: [1]

The schedule & meeting minutes

Monday 12.3.

Start-up meeting

• the content of the meeting is basically representad in the causal-chain diagram of the case study page: Risk assessment on airports - Kuopio workshop case study

Tuesday 13.3.

Morning meeting 9:30 Minutes, remote participants: Alex (+49 711 685-87838)

The planned teleconference at 13:00 was eventually cancelled due to technical difficulties. We got some comments on phone from Erik and they can be found at the case study page along with some discussion.

Wednesday 14.3.

Morning meeting 9:30, remote participants: Alex (+49 711 685-87838)

Disussion content: list of methods, tools and programs that we have and what we would like to have:

• Scoping tool
  • needed
  • Describe functionalities
  • Demonstration
• Stakeholder + communication:
  • Selection of stakeholders?
  • Meetings
  • Mediawiki
• Uncertainty
  • MNP UNC.Guide (reminder for each variable)
  • WP1.3:checklist
  • Monte-Carlo simulation, Bayesian statistics
  • Sensitivity analyses tools (Frey et al. 200? article)
• Perception
  • Online tool
• Presentation and communication
  • Guidance exists (EPA?)
  • Structured reports (also other parts than the final report)
• Expert judgement
  • Selection of experts
  • Expert elicitation (excalibur)
  • WP1.3 (and WP1.5)
• Value of information
  • EVPI, EVPXI and so on
  • Could answer to question:How far you should go?
• Indicators
  • Guidance in developing
  • Need for improved DPSEEA
  • Use of WHO indicators: needs work
  • What is the difference between indicator and variable? (Mikko:indicators are variables with special interest)
  • SP3?
• Combination of data
  • Meta-analysis methods for epi and tox data

Thursday 15.3.

Morning meeting 9:30

Agenda/highlights of discussion:

• Introduction of what has been going on to the newcomers (Patrycja, Clive, Mari)
  • Patrycja to present her BBN model in friday morning meeting
• MNP uncertainty guide demo (Anne, Sjur)
  • the tool can be adapted to meet Intarese needs
• Intarese demonstrator demo (Sjur)
  • an updated demonstrator to be done later this year
  • this workshop should provide a rough suggestion of the needed toolbox functionalities
• tools needed in Intarese toolbox
  • participants to have a look and edit the page - will be discussed later in more detail
• contents of variable, input and method pages
  • serious effort to making the case required thursday and friday
  • limitations of night-time noise chosen as the only policy option to be considered

• NEW Category:First level scoping objects
• NEW Glossary of environmental health updated
• NEW Tools needed in Intarese toolbox - Please comment!

Friday 16.3.

Morning meeting 9:30 IN B-WING MEETING ROOM

Agenda/minutes:

• What to present in SP1 meeting next tuesday?
  • essential parts of integrated RA, available (+ needed?) methods, available (+ needed?) tools
  • how different parts of the case study assessment are linked with different methods and tools
• Getting on with the case assessment
  • emphasis on identification of linkages between variables and methods/tools
  • noise policy case as the essential part of the case study assessment
• Patrycja's BBN model presentation was given in the afternoon 15:00

Weekend 17.3.-18.3.

• social activities
• freetime

Monday 19.3.

Morning meeting 10:30, essentials:

• framework, methods and tools -tables appear to be the most important output of the workshop so far
• assessment workspace concept seems to capture effectively the primary needs for the Intarese toolbox
• the case study assessment has been useful in coordinating our discussions about the framework methods and tools, but does not appear to be producing hardly any direct results
• the main points to be written out intermediate report page for SP1 meeting

Tuesday 20.3.

Morning meeting 9:30, essentials:

• continue working on the tables
• contribute to development/description of the assessment workspace
• case study work can be frozen for the time being at least until we get the SP1 meeting feedback

Wednesday 21.3.

Morning meeting 9:30

Agenda/minutes:

• feedback from SP1 meeting
  • see the comments by Jouni above
• decision of focusing efforts on last 3 days of workshop
  • tables still have space for improvement
  • assessment workspace concept needs to be worked on
  • case study can be left to wait for possible further use for the time being
  • let's try to make full use of Alex's presence during this week (valuation presentation, WP1.4 discussions, glossary discussions, ...)

Thursday 22.3.

Morning meeting 9:30

Agenda/minutes:

• work for the last days
  • improvement of tables (everyone)
  • ideas/comments/anything to be put on the assessment workspace -page (everyone)
  • writing a report: how things happened?, what was good/bad? what did we learn?, etc. (Mikko + everyone)
• Alex's brief presentation about health impact valuation + discussion

• after the meeting we also ended up talking about organising a European risk analysis study program as a spin-off/result of Intarese

• Glossary discussion (Alex, Mikko)
• discussion/meeting about WP1.4 deliverables due end of April (Jouni, Alex, Mikko, Marko?, ...)

Friday 23.3.

Morning meeting 10:15 (in Jouni's room)

Remote participant: Clive (+44 1327 843319)

Agenda/minutes:

• finalizing the output:
  • report to be written with links to the tables, case and assessment workspace -pages
    • description of things worked out (or not)
    • also general lessons learned and individual comments included
    • implications of the output pointed out
    • a pdf-version to be created and distributed within the project (only highlights of the case included)
• making use of the output:
  • assessment workspace and framework/method description to be included in WP1.4 deliverables due in April
  • assessment workspace and framework/method description to be presented in SP4 meeting in April
  • WP1.4 will suggest assessment workspace concept framework/method description to be included in the training workshop (in May) contents
  • let's try to get some WP3.X('s) to do/present/share/disseminate their work in wiki using the assessment workspace idea
    • this serves the purposes of both guidance and feedback to/from SP1 & SP3
• We should develop the idea of producing ascientific article about the workshop and its outputs
  • e.g. the process of creating the Intarese method (Clive's proposal)
  • this should be done following the Intarese dissemination strategy

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Draft Planning for Next 18 Months (1 Nov 06 – 30 April 08) was removed because it was not the final version. To see the draft, click here. Pyrkilo interface was moved to Assessment workspace (Intarese method)