User:Adnank

Homework 1

1. What is the main purpose of environmental health assessment?

The purpose of environmental health assessment is to improve deliberate plans of actions that guide decisions aiming for desired outcomes. There are several different types of assessment approaches that address issues relevant to environment and health. These approaches have certain differences e.g. in emphasis, scope, theoretical basis, and context of development and application, but they all share the basic idea of science-based support for decision making on issues of societal relevance.

2. What is pragmatism?

It means that theory and practice are not perceived as separate entities, but instead the question in consideration is whether practices are intelligent or uninformed. Knowledge and action are thus seen as deeply intertwined.

3. What is impact assessment?

The purpose of an impact assessment is to evaluate all potential environmental impacts of a proposed large-scale project. The assessment should take into account health, environmental and social impacts as well as technical and economical issues. Problem owners are the ones with the intent to plan and execute the project and they have the legal obligation to initiate the assessment process. The impact assessment process addresses questions related to potential impacts of planned projects on human and animal health and well-being, environment (e.g. soil, water, air, climate, and vegetation), composition of society (e.g. building, landscape, cultural heritage) and exploitation of natural resources

4. What are the dimensions of openness?

The phases of open assessment process resemble those of most assessment approaches: (1) issue framing, (2) designing variables, (3) executing variables and analyses, and (4) reporting, through which the process progresses in iterative cycles. It considers assessments as open collaborative processes of creating shared knowledge and understanding. Openness means welcoming all types of knowledge, possessed by all kinds of actors and found from all types of sources, into a systematic analysis. Exclusion of participants or inputs is allowed only based on well-argued, explicated and cogent reasons. The open process brings scientific experts, decision makers, and stakeholders to the same collaborative process.

←--#: . Very good answers! --Mikko Pohjola 09:50, 28 January 2013 (EET) (type: truth; paradigms: science: defence)

⇤--#: . Where are all other homework answers? If they are on someone else's page, add links here so they can be found. --Mikko Pohjola 09:50, 28 January 2013 (EET) (type: truth; paradigms: science: attack)----#: . I am linking my partners page here --Adnank 11:08, 1 February 2013 (EET) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)

Homework 2

What is R code ? how and where is this R code written, programmed and executed ?

Homework 3

user:Soroushm

Homework 4

Q1. What are the aims/goals of the strategy/program, i.e. what are the desired impacts and outcomes striven for?

The main goal was to assess the impacts of climate change in the area and to prepare for the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events. This can be done by reducing the vulnerabilities of the area to climate change. The aim of the strategy was well-being of citizens and functioning of cities in changing climate.

Q2. Who are those that benefit if the aims/goals of the strategy/program are reached? How?

Society and following organizations and government ministries will be most benefited if the strategy is achieved because the impacts of climate change will cause a lot of damage. Cities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen, HSY, HSL, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of the Interior, Rescue services, Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities- Other interest groups: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Uusimaa ELY Centre- Research institutes.

Q3. What are the actions that are needed/intended to take in order to progress towards the aims/goals? Background studies were done in order to collect data about the regional climate and sea level scenarios, modeling of river floods in climate change conditions and a survey of climate change impacts in the region. Existing programmes, legislation, research and studies concerning adaptation were collected.

Q4. Who are those that actually realize these actions?

The work was carried out with close cooperation with the experts of themetropolitan area cities, regional emergency services, Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki Region TransportAuthority and other regional organizations.

Q5. What are the decisions that are needed to make in order to enable/promote the actions?

Some of the decisions that might improve the actions would be assessment of air quality, health impacts, biodiversity, economic impacts and greenhouse emissions.

Q6. Who are the decision makers? Organizations like the environment ministry, board of HSY, Government or other local organizations.

Q7. What direct or indirect health impacts, positive or negative, these decisions and actions (may) have?

Climate change causes adverse effects mostly such as effects in drinking water, air quality, food chain which most of them are negative. Also flood risk and thunderstorms could be the other indirect problems in other words natural disasters could be another indirect factor.

Q8. Where and how do these impacts take place, who are those that face these health impacts in practice?

The community,the citizens, both of them can be affected by negative results of climate change but the level of exposure for people can be higher because due to the disaster and natural hazards, the injuries and disease will affect the people and also communications, heating, water supply and traffic and food system will be disturbed.

Q9. Are the health impacts big or small in relation to other impacts (e.g. economic, social, climate, other environmental ...)?

Economic, social and environmental impacts are much bigger than health impacts because they will be long lasting.

Q10. Do the intended policies result in win-win, win-lose, lose-win, or lose-lose situations with regard to health and other impacts?

The storms of recent years have demonstrated the vulnerability of the Finnish society to natural hazards and the importance of preparing for them. Our society is very dependent on electricity, and long-lasting power cuts can have a significant impact on such things as communications, heating, water supply and traffic. The significance of co-operation between authorities and other actors in the prevention of natural disasters and in the recovery of them is now being highlighted. Preparing in advance for disasters and their consequences is worth doing, as it reduces the damages and costs that arise from them. And in my opinion this is a lose-win situation as the Finnish authorities have learnt from the previous disasters and have planned the strategies for any upcoming natural disaster.

Q11. Formulate a plausible and meaningful specific assessment question that takes account of (some of) the aspects considered in above questions?

What other alternatives are available to cope up with the disasters resulting from climate change?

Q12. Extra question: In what ways your answers do or do not represent "shared understanding"? (The climate program/strategy can be considered a compilation of contributions by many experts and attempting to reflect the views and needs of different decision makers and stakeholders).

Shared understanding probably points out in here because the ideas and thoughts of City of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen, HSY, HSL, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of the Interior, Rescue services, Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities- Other interest groups: Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Uusimaa ELY Centre- Research institutes and experts are gathered together in order to make the best decisions however some changes might be required to modify and update the information but all the comments from the interviews are collected so that a better source of data will be available.

user:Soroushm

Homework 5

Q 1. Who are the relevant participants of the assessment?

Community, experts, HSY and other organisations

Q2. What roles the different participants (may) take in the assessment?

Experts and other participants are interviewed about the climate change and their opinions for the preparations for climate change were taken.

Q3. What kind of relevant knowledge they (may) have regarding the assessment?

Some useful information from the previous studies and experiences from the past might be helpful

Q4. What needs and aims do they represent in the assessment?

To get ready for the worst climate change disasters by interviewing and taking opinions from different government and non-government organizations and by sharing their ideas and understandings

Q5. Consider also the following questions about facilitating collaboration:

Q6. How could the relevant participants be involved in the assessment in an effective way?

Their thoughts and comments can be collected and published on organization’s websites.

Q7. How can the quality of an assessment be assured if anyone can participate?

After collecting the information from the people, experts and assessors will analyze the weak points and positive points of their ideas can make the best decisions before implementation and also some of them can be modified.

Q8. How can you prevent malevolent contributions where the purpose is to vandalise the process?

By acquiring of the updated information and examining the methods which going to be used

Q9. How can you make the outcome converge to a conclusion, because all issues are uncertain and controversial?

One of the efficient ways would be implementation of adaptation policies to get the valuable data about the effectiveness of the policies and actions as well as using the latest climate change information other than that the operating methods should be scrutinized carefully.

Q10. How can you ensure that the outcomes are useful for the users?

By defining a logical adaptation practices

Homework 5, part C: Prepare following tables from the climate programme of your selection. Instructions for table structures can be found at

Training assessment. • Decisions table • Endpoints table

Decisions

Obs decision maker Decision option variable cell change description 1 HSY, Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki Region Transport Authority Assess the impacts of climate change in the area Reduce vulnerability Environmental impacts, Health impacts year 2020 2 HSY, Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki Region Transport Authority Prepare for the impacts of climate change and to extreme weather events Reduce vulnerability Environmental impacts, Health impacts year 2020 4 HSY, Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki Region Transport Authority To reduce the vulnerabilities Reduce vulnerability Health impacts year 2020 5 Helsinki city Health promotion reduce the vulnerability training costs year 2020 6 Helsinki city Health promotion reduce the vulnerability year 2020

Endpoints

Obs Stake Holder variable cell Model Result Description 1 HSY, Ministry of the Environment, Environmental impacts, Health impacts year 2020 2 Helsinki Region Transport Authority Training costs year 2020 4 HSY, Ministry of the Environment Development or Maintenance cost year 2020 5 Helsinki city Training costs year 2020 6 Helsinki city Maintenance cost year 2020 user:Soroushm