Decision analysis and risk management 2017

This page is about a course Decision analysis and risk management organised in 2017. For a course organised in 2015, 2013 and 2011, see Decision analysis and risk management 2015, Decision analysis and risk management 2013 and Decision analysis and risk management, respectively. If you cannot find answers on these pages, you can contact the course organiser Jouni Tuomisto (jouni.tuomisto(at)thl.fi).

Decision analysis and risk management (DARM)[1] is a course taught in the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) for Master's (MSc) Degree Programme in General Toxicology and Environmental Health Risk Assessment ToxEn.

Aims of the course

To give a good understanding and practical skills to perform, participate, and moderate decision analyses, open assessments, and open policy practice using Opasnet.

The capability to act as an expert facilitator is the key objective in developing the course content. The purpose is to learn to effectively use facilitation to improve decision support.

In the course:

The student will learn about the fundamentals of decision analysis, the connections between assessments and societal decision making, and the role of decision making in a pragmatic context of improving outcomes. The student will learn to apply the scientific method and falsification in the context of an assessment, and know how to build an open assessment based on the requirements of societal decision making.

The focus is on how to convincingly exclude poor decision options rather than trying to find a theoretically optimal solution (e.g. with highest expected utility).

Course evaluation

On the last day (16th May 2017) the students will be asked to evaluate the course using the evaluation criteria of properties of good decision support. In addition, they will be asked whether the homework were too heavy for the time available. A summary of the written comments from the 2015 course is available on the course page.

Course details

• Name: Decision analysis and risk management          
• Abbreviation: DARM
• ECTS-credits: 6
• Home page of the course: http://en.opasnet.org/w/Darm
• Degree Programme: ToxEn, Environment health risk assessment
• Teaching Language: English, with Finnish accent
• Offered for Students in Other Universities (JOO-opintoja): Yes.
• Organising Departments: Department of environmental science (in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Welfare, THL)          
• Course Director: Jukka Juutilainen
• Teachers: Jouni Tuomisto, (Mikko Pohjola, Marjo Niittynen?)
• Contact Persons email: jouni.tuomisto(at)thl.fi     
• Registration for the Course: WebOodi at UEF. If you don't need course credits, you can contact Jouni Tuomisto directly.

Teaching / Learning Methods

• Lectures 8 h
• Checkpoints of exercises 4 h
• Seminars (practical work done presented by students): 6 h
• Course evaluation discussion 1 h
• TOTAL 19 h
• Distance learning: Own reading and homeworks 143 h

Lectures and videos

See the Content and schedule table for timing, locations, topics and links to materials. One lecture and classroom exercise session is typically 2 * 45 min, held without a break. The lectures and sessions start 15 min past full hour.

You may follow the 2015 lectures online. They are stored in Google Drive. You do NOT need a password for Darm videos. The video system should work without problems in Windows and Mac and with Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Internet Explorer. However, you may have problems to see the videos with mobile phones or tablets.

• 18.3.2015 08:25 Introduction part 1 [2]
• 18.3.2015 08:32 Introduction, part 2 [3]
• 23.3.2015 13:15 Impact assessment [4]
• 24.3.2015 08:15 Management of assessments [5]
• 25.3.2015 08:15 Homework 3, 5, 6 [6]
• 25.3.2015 13:15 Structure of Opasnet pages [7]
• 26.3.2015 08:15 Homework 9, 10 [8]
• 11.5.2015 09:15 Seminar, part 1 [9]
• 11.5.2015 12:15 Seminar, part 2 [10]
• 12.5.2015 12:15 Seminar, part 3 [11]
• 12.5.2015 14:15 Seminar, part 4 [12]
• 12.5.2015 14:26 Seminar, course evaluation [13]

Study materials include e.g. PowerPoint files, scanned articles or book chapters, online videos, web-sites, web-documents, and materials in Quizlet and Khan Academy. Due to copyright reasons, some of the materials may be distributed directly to the participants and not via Opasnet. If possible, links to all material is provided on this page.

Homework exercises

See Decision analysis and risk management 2017/Homework

Evaluation

Acceptable completion of all homeworks 1-10 and seminar presentation in the end of the course. Seminars are mandatory.

Homeworks 1 - 3 are evaluated on a 0-1 scale, where 0 = not completed and 1 = completed.

Homeworks 4 - 10 and seminar presentation are evaluated on a 0-2 scale, where 0 = not completed, 1 = satisfactory, 1.5 = good, 2 = excellent.

Satisfactory completion of all homework exercise gives 10 points and score 1 (on a 1-5 scale). By doing better that satisfactorily in exercises 3-9, it is possible to get a higher score as follows:

Points	Score
<11	1
11-12	2
12.5-14	3
14.5-15.5	4
=>16	5

Content and schedule

To prepare for the course: study these terms: Glossary#Terms in open assessment. This is important, because in open policy practice we use a lot of words that in everyday language may be synonyms or may have several different meanings. In this context, they have a specific meaning and they are NOT replaceable with similar terms.

Teaching material

All material will be openly available online.

Khan Academy:

• Join the class with a class code:
  1. Sign up at khanacademy.org (or log in with their existing accounts)
  2. Visit khanacademy.org/coaches
  3. There, in the "Add a coach" field, enter the class code 65V4KP
• Do the tests of these sections to test that you know the topic. If you don't, also watch the videos to learn it. We will not teach proability theory during the course, but decision analysis methods are based on it, so you should be able to use it.
  • Basics of probabilities and combinatorics
  • Statistics/Probability, especially Bayes theorem visualized and Bayes theorem explained.
  • Random variables
  • Critical thinking and arguments

Quizlet:

Subscribe to the class Open policy practice by clicking this link (Course on decision analysis and risk management). Learn all sets of terms.

DARM schedule 2017

Date	Time	Place	Topic
21.03.	Tue 08.00-10.00	SN300 seminar room	Introduction, overview, course tasks, terminology (slides with voice). Homework 1: read/browse Open policy practice and answer some questions. Homework 2 given (only checked based on the update table). Additional reading: Opasnet training, Different (legal) assessment frameworks
27.03.	Mon 08.00-10.00	SN201 auditorium	Guidance for Kahn Academy and Quizlet websites. Answers to practical questions. Basic wiki guidance. Impact assessment and decision making, a risk management overview (slides). Open policy practice. Case vaccination: Pneumococcal vaccine. Homework 3 given: Make two new questions about what is unclear to you about the concepts to your user page. Shared information objects in policy support. Homework 4 given: Develop a basic assessment structure about an information need.
30.03.	Thu 13.00-16.00	ME201 meeting room	Homework 1 checked. Questions related to homework 2 discussed. Management of assessments and decision making: execution, evaluation, facilitation. (slides). Decision analysis. Basic concepts and information structures in open assessment: assessment, variable, knowledge crystal. Their implementation in Opasnet. Case studies. Helsinki energy decision 2015 (started by the previous Darm course!). Case climate change (Urgenche) (slides). Practical training of Opasnet: looking at the Training assessment.
04.04.	Tue 08.00-10.00	SN206 seminar room	Homework 3 checked. No slides. Topic: Climate policies. Homework 5 given. Homework 6 given. Additional reading from the 2013 Darm cource: Assessment scoping - aims, decisions, actions, impacts (slides). Assessment scoping & facilitation - participation, roles, perspectives, knowledge, collaboration. (slides). Structured discussion. No slides, see pages Discussion. Homework 7 given. See also the Darm 2013 topics: Environmental impact assessment directive [14], Discussion on safety of Pandemrix
21.04.	Fri 08.00-09.00	CA105 computer classroom	Homeworks 4 and 5 checked. Homework 8 given about Climate change policies in Helsinki. Homework 9 given. Challenging open policy practice: any arguments against what was thought.
28.04.	Fri 14.00-15.00	CA105 computer classroom	Checkpoint of work progress. Homeworks 6 and 7 checked. In addition, practical tricks in editing Opasnet as needed (basics of R code, page editing, version control, categories, permanent link, files in Opasnet, upload, linking, using, ... creating articles)
11.5.	Thu 10.00-11.00	SN215	Checkpoint of work progress. Homeworks 8 and 9 checked.
15.05.	Mon 08.00-16.00	SN300 seminar room	Seminars: Group work presentations (6 slots à 30 min = 4 lectures) MANDATORY
16.05.	Tue 12.00-16.00	SN300 seminar room	Seminars: Group work presentations (3 slots à 30 min = 2 lectures) MANDATORY. Course evaluation and feedback, including round-up of HW3 & HW9

8 h lectures, 4 h checkpoints of work progress, 6 h seminars, 1 h evaluation. Total 19 hours of on-site learning.

Distant learning: reading materials, videos, lecture notes, homeworks 1-10. Total 143 h.

Further reading:

• Why Russian data is reusable but US data is not although both are open. Russian data for 2011 duma election is (or at least was) available in machine-readable format for the whole country. In contrast, the US results for presidential election 2012 were published as PDF files on each county's website. It would have required several months of work to collect and retype all into a common database.
• Training assessment; see the assessment page and related pages.
• Additional reading: Case Puijo forest management (slides).
• Expert contributions and exposure-response functions, example IEQ factors.
• Structure of pages and objects and R code. No slides, see pages Assessment, Variable, Method, Ovariable, Training assessment, ERF of dioxin. Case example of Bayesian modelling: Human PBPK model for dioxin.

Help and guidance

Topic	Contact
General arrangements	Teaching assistant ? , UEF
Homework exercises 1 - 9:	Jouni

Help requests or other comments can be posted on the course web-page or the exercise web-page by using the comment boxes on the end of the pages (no user account / log in required) or on the discussion pages.

See also

• Eracedu: related further education courses in Kuopio (in Finnish)
• Design for government course in the University of Helsinki
• Govlab
• LIVE FEED FROM LECTURES in 2013 and 2011 (not a complete set)

Content of 2011 course

Abbreviations: DA = decision analysis, RM = risk management, RA = risk assessment, RC = risk communication.

Introduction to the course introduction to decision analysis: slides Introduction to risk management Conventional perspectives to RM: slides Additional material Framework for environmental health risk management An introduction to the IRGC risk governance framework Risk governance deficits - Policy brief State of the art in benefit–risk analysis: Environmental health Introduction to using Opasnet Introduction to Opasnet Demonstration of structure, content and functionalities Exercises user accounts DA study plan page RM report page browsing and searching commenting and discussing Additional material Category:DARM exercise#Introduction to working in Opasnet Opasnet Help:Contents Introduction to probability theory: Slides Subjective probability Practical exercise Bayesian rule Importance of exhaustiveness (coverage) Additional material: Dennis Lindley: Philosophy of statistics Lindley, a backup file Bayes' rule. Updating probability. Examples: red balls, narcolepsy test. Decision analysis. slides Measures of outcome: Utility, DALY, QALY, WTP Concepts: decisions, objectives, optimization, uncertainty, decision trees Influence diagrams, Bayesian belief nets. Purpose of assessment: Why it is done Modeling and Monte Carlo simulation: slides Computer modeling Why? Approximation When data is not available Monte Carlo simulation When and why to use? Common uncertainty distributions Normal distribution is not the only option Calculation exercise: slides Case: Mortality due to PM2.5 in Kuopio Additional material Pope et al. 2002 Probabilistic models slides Gibbs sampling Bayesian network Hierarchical Bayes model Calculation exercise of calibration and PM risks with Opasnet R Open assessment quiz, heande:Calibration of a group Health impacts of PM in Kuopio Expert judgement slides Additional material: Tuomisto et al: PM expert elicitation Overall view of different models slides Why do we do modelling? Producing result from rationale. Deterministic, heuristic, and probabilistic estimates. Functional, differential, logical, and probabilistic relations. Other relations (neural networks). Decision making under uncertainty Why decision analysis?: Slides Sensitivity analysis: Slides Value of information: Slides Additional material: Further information about sensitivity analysis (Frey et al. 2004) Value of information, Value of information analysis Assessment performance: Slides quality assurance/quality control uncertainty model performance information in use → Properties of good assessment Calculation exercise. Link to exercise page

Risk management: State-of-the-art? lecture: slides perspectives to assessment and management tendencies in EHA and EHRM What is managed, who is responsible, what is included? RM in reality vs. (institutional) RM frameworks contemporary challenges in assessment-management interaction discussion: assessment and management in the swine flu case questions, actors, roles in swine flu case RM? Additional material: heande:State of the art of environmental health assessment Decision Making for the Environment Risk Assessment in the Federal Government Science and Decisions Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment Understanding Risk (free online version) Risk management: a social learning perspective lecture: slides participation in assessment and management dimensions of openness assessments as collaborative information production projects discussion: role of public in swine flu case RM? dimensions of openness -analysis of the narcolepsy study RM Additional material: heande:Open participation in environmental health assessment Risk management: facilitation of (open) risk management lecture: slides collective knowledge creation pragmatism, abduction and trialogical approach a game of questions and answers pragmatic knowledge services from an information society towards a knowledge society exercise Discussion and structured argumentation in Opasnet argumentation analysis on some swine flu RM related texts Additional material: Pragmatic knowledge services Argumentation Pragma-dialectics argumentation theory. Risk management: from needs to knowledge, knowledge to action Lecture: slides Round-up of what has been stated about (open) RM so far It's all about developing shared beliefs to guide action hypothesis development and testing discussion shared belief systems inference rules evaluation of page content in Opasnet Discussion Based on the argumentation exercise (1.4.) Additional material: Inference rules Scientific method Falsification Justified true belief Shared belief system Summary of decision analysis and risk management: slides Overview of DA, RM, OA & ORM Who needs (uses, makes, understands) DA & RM? Examples of past, on-going, and upcoming OA/ORM cases overview model results and analyses conclusions relations to groups' DA study plans What's new about the swine flu case? Q&A, discussions and group feedback on the course contents and arrangements Suggest more topics to be presented or discussed on the last lecture topics can be e.g. some unclear things to be re-reviewed or something you may feel has been missing from the course contents Final seminar: Presentations of DA study plans by groups 5 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for discussion Presentations of the RM exercises: 5 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for discussion

Links to additional RM materials

• IRGC risk governance framework
• Risk governance deficits - Analysis and illustration
• Risk assessment and risk management in regulatory decision making
• International Risk Governance Council
• The National Academies Press (publisher of e.g. "red book", "orange book", and "silver book")

Background information about other Decision analysis and risk management study programs in Europe and in USA is provided here: Decision analysis and risk management - background information

NOTE! On this page, there was a list of related further education courses in Kuopio (in Finnish).

Keywords

Risk assessment. Decision analysis. Bayesian theory. Open assessment. Risk management. Societal decision making.     

To do

• Training assessment should be either replaced by a real case or updated.
• Update slides in lectures 1-4
• Go through pages in Template:Opasnet training and check what is needed.
• Fill in the attributes of Pneumococcal vaccine assessment.
• Update rcodes on ERF of dioxin
• Konkreettinen esimerkki päätöksenteon ongelmista. Sen kautta esitellään oppn hyödyt. Mikä? Ipcc? Joku oman elämän esimerkki? Mieluummin ehkä yhteiskunnallimen jotta tulee realistisia rooleja. Otetaan silakka bra esimerkiksi vai pneumokokki ja ilmastoaihe konkreettisen työn kohteeksi.
• Tee eka luennolla harjoitus jossa ryhmänä koetetaan luoda jaettu ymmärrys jostain selkeästä aiheesta. Pieni ja tuttu aihe mutta mikä. Pitää olla yhteisöllinen.
• Hw7 jaa sivut valmiinsi numeroiduille pareille. Numerot jaetaan kurssilla. Jokaiselle ainakin yksi varoable methos ja encyclopedia.
• Assessment evaluation tehtävä oikeista arvioinneista: silakka urgenche kuopio, rauma, joitakin opasnetin ulkopuolelta? Minera vesiopas pahtavaara talvivaara fuk ushima

See also

• op_fi:Avoimen päätöksentekokäytännön koulutus

Related files