User:Adnank
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.