Decision analysis and risk management 2015

This page is about a course Decision analysis and risk management organised in 2015. For a course organised in 2013 and 2011, see 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 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 14 h
• Checkpoints of exercises 3 h
• Seminars (practical work done presented by students): 6 h
• Course evaluation discussion 1 h
• TOTAL 24 h
• Distance learning: Own reading and homeworks 138 h

Lectures

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

Study materials include e.g. PowerPoint files, scanned articles or book chapters, web-sites and web-documents. Due to copyright reasons, some of the materials are distributed through a password protected HEANDE-page. Passwords to HEANDE will be distributed during the lectures. In the end of the page there are some more links for further information.

Homework exercises

See Decision analysis and risk management 2015/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
14.5-16	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.

DARM course schedule 2015

Date	Time	Classroom	Lecturer	Topic
18.3. L1-2	8-10	E25 (Technopolis)	Jouni	Introduction, overview, course tasks, terminology (slides). Homework 1: read/browse Open policy practice and optionally Mikko's thesis [2] and answer some questions. Homework 2 given (only checked based on the update table). Read pages listed in Template:Opasnet training and familiarise yourself to the concepts.
23.3. L3-4	13-15	Sn300 (Snellmania)	Jouni	Impact assessment and decision making, a risk management overview (slides). Open policy practice. Homework 1 checked. Homework 3: Make two new question about what is unclear to you about the concepts to your user page. Shared information objects in policy support. See Training assessment; see the assessment page and related pages.
24.3. L5-6	8-10	Sn300	Jouni, Mikko?	Decision analysis 1. Basic concepts and information structures in open assessment. Their implementation in Opasnet. Homework 4: Develop a basic assessment structure about an information need related to a) Talvivaara mine or b) metal mining in general or c) climate change policies in cities. The detailed question is your choice.
24.3. L7-8	13-15	Ca103 Computer classroom (Canthia)	Jouni, Marjo?	Case studies. Homework 3 checked. Case Puijo forest management (slides). Case climate change (Urgenche) (slides). Case vaccination: Pneumococcal vaccine. Practical training of Opasnet.
25.3. L9	8-9	MS307 (MediStudia)	Jouni	Assessment scoping - aims, decisions, actions, impacts (slides). Topic: Climate policies. Homework 5 given. Assessment scoping & facilitation - participation, roles, perspectives, knowledge, collaboration. (slides). Topic: Climate policies. Homework 6 given.
25.3. L10-12	13-16	MS307	Jouni	Structure of pages and objects and R code. No slides, see pages Energy consumption of heating of buildings in Kuopio, Variable, Method, Ovariable, Training assessment. Homework 7 given. Structured discussion. Topic: Environmental impact assessment directive [3]. No slides, see pages Discussion, Discussion on safety of Pandemrix. Homework 8 given.
26.3. L13-14	8-10	Sn300	Jouni	Expert contributions: exposure-response functions in estimating health impacts. (slides). Topic: IEQ factors. Homework 9 given. Management of assessments and decision making: execution, evaluation, facilitation. (slides) Homework 10 given.
15.4. L15	13-14	Ca103 Computer classroom	Jouni	Checkpoint of work progress. In addition, practical tricks in editing Opasnet as needed. links, uploading images and files). basics of R code. page editing and version control in Opasnet. using R code effectively. basic text editing. categories/categorizing. permanent link. files in Opasnet: upload, linking, using, ... creating articles
23.4. L16	12-13	Ca103 Computer classroom	Jouni	Checkpoint of work progress.
29.4. L17	12-13	Ca103 Computer classroom	Jouni	Checkpoint of work progress.
11.5. L18-20	9-11, 12-14	Sn207	Jouni	Seminars: Group work presentations (6 slots à 30 min = 4 lectures) MANDATORY
12.5. L21-23	12-15	Sn207	Jouni	Seminars: Group work presentations (3 slots à 30 min = 2 lectures) MANDATORY
12.5. L24	15-16	Sn207	Jouni	Course evaluation and feedback, including round-up of HW3 & HW9
			Jouni	If there are any unfinished written tasks, there is time to finalise them until 22.5.

14 h lectures, 3 h checkpoints of work progress, 6 h seminars, 1 h evaluation. Total 24 hours of on-site learning.

Distant learning: reading materials, lecture notes, homeworks 1-10. Total 138 h.

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

• Update Open policy practice for homework 1.
• Update homework 1 questions to reflect open policy practice.
• Training assessment should be either replaced by a real case of updated.
• Update slides in lectures 1-4

Related files