Talk:Guidebook

Article templates -- Mikko Pohjola 14:56, 17 January 2008 (EET)

The guidance system will be composed of pages describing processes relevant to risk/impact assessment, pages describing the kinds of products that these processes (are intended to) produce (and the kinds of products that can be used in/by these processes?). In addition, the guidebook content can be complemented with some so-called glue pages, which could contain information that is not easily captured in the process/product structure. ...which are on the top-level of the Guidebook and give a short overview over the topic linking to the respective process and product articles. An example of a glue page is Guidebook, which is the starting page of the guidebook and has a table of contents -like structure and perhaps some introductory text. In addition to the above-mentioned contents, the guidebook will also include descriptions of the context and the theoretical foundations of what the rest of the guidebook describes.

Processess are events, or composites of events, in which various pieces of input information are manipulated and formed into new products of information; the output. A process is “something you do”. Processes relevant to risk/impact assessment are captured into the guidance system as descriptions of these processes, possibly also including the tools relevant to the process and descriptions of how to manage the process. A process object can be e.g. in the form of a method description (calculation, formal discussion, etc.) describing also the tools, models and other means that are used in applying the method.

Product objects in the guidebook are pieces of information that describe what kinds of products are produced by the risk/impact processes (and/or what kinds of products can be used in/by them?). The actual outputs of the processes, the products themselves, do not belong to the guidebook, but instead to the data center.

Process and product descriptions in the guidebook are structured objects, i.e. they have a pre-defined format (see the template descriptions below). The theoretical and contextual descriptions are unstructured, i.e. freely formed, information.

Most objects belonging to the guidebook are process descriptions.

Template: process description

Summary

The summary of a process is a very short overview of the process, and may contain all types of information that are considered relevant for this specific process (max words: 250?)

Name

The name of the process should be unique (there should not be two objects (processes, products or product descriptions) with identical names). The name should be chosen so that it is descriptive, unambiguous and not easily confused with other processes, products or product descriptions. (max words: 20?)

Purpose

(This is the same as Scope in the general object attribute list.) The general purpose of every process is to manipulate information in aim to produce a particular information product. The process-specific purpose describes the intended product of this particular process. This should contain all relevant information needed to distinguish the process from other processes. (max words: 400?)

Structure of the process

(This is the same as the Result (of the process description) in the general object attribute list.) The result section has three sub-attributes. (max words: 3000?)

Input format

The input data, variable or parameter types, their syntax, and other relevant information is described here.

Procedure

The actual process – how it works and how to do – is described here. It consists of e.g. the mathematical formula to calculate the result. The procedure uses algebra or other explicit methods if possible.

Management

A complex process may require that also the management process of the procedure is described. The procedure may for example be a mathematical algorithm. The management process is a computer software that runs the algorithm, so that when you have the software, the management is a trivial task. If you do not have the management process - well, good luck to you and your calculator. So, actually models and software are procedures that have the management process packed into the same neat package. An other example of a management process is a guidance by the U.S.EPA about how to plan and organise for stakeholder meetings. The actual procedure here is to obtain information and feedback from the stakeholders.

Output format

shortly describes the format of the product of the process, which should fulfil the purpose as described in the scope. It furthermore links – if applicable – to the product object.

Rationale

(This is the same as the Definition (of the process description) in the general object attribute list.) This attribute answers to the following questions: What is known about a good process for this purpose? How do you know that the procedure described is good? (max words: 2000)

See also

See also links to pages (both internal guidebook pages and external) which relate to the process subject. All subjects that could be relevant for readers of this page can be listed here. (max links: 20?)

References

All references, as used in the texts above. (max references: 30?)

Template: product description

Products, describing real-world entities ("zero meta level") and being products of the assessment (sub-)processes, are located in the data centre. Product descriptions, to the extent that they are necessary, are included in the guidebook as universal products.

Template: product

Summary

The summary of a product is a very short description of the product, and may contain all types of information that are considered relevant for this specific product (max words: 250?)

Name

The name of the product should be unique (there should not be two products or processes with identical names). The name should be chosen so that it is descriptive, unambiguous and not easily confused with other products or processes. (max words: 20?)

Scope

The scope of the product gives a research question that this product object aims to answer. The scope includes – if applicable – its spatial, temporal, or other limits (system boundaries). A product object may also be a generic one applying to any spatio-temporal locations. Whether these are just variables, and how they are used in the Guidebook is under study. (max words: 400?)

Definition

The definition describes the data and reasoning that tells us what the answer to the question in the scope is. In the case of a variable, it has four sub-attributes:

Data

What data or observations are available about this object?

Causality

What variables affect the result of this object when they change (i.e., which variables are causally related to this one)?

Unit

What is the measurement unit of the result?

Formula: How is the result derived or computed?.

Definition may link to the process(es) that lead to this product, explaining shortly why these processes are relevant. (max words: 3000?)

Results

Contains the answer to the question presented in the scope. Usually the text is short (max 500 words), but the result tables or figures may be extensive; there is no upper limit.

See also

See also links to pages (both internal resources centre pages and external) which relate to the product. All subjects that could be relevant for readers of this page can be listed here. (max links: 20?)

References

All references, as used in the texts above. (max references: 30?)

Practical information for both templates

----#(number):: . General information on how the sentences should be structured etc. (see also my first version and the project that RIVM already have conducted. --Alexandra Kuhn 12:50, 14 January 2008 (EET) (type: truth; paradigms: science: comment)

Any section may contain a "more" button to more detailed information that is hidden by default to increase readability. The content is still directly relevant for the section. In addition, if there is a lot of further background information available about the object, e.g. its history, current practice, etc.) which is useful but not required to utilise the object, a background article can be created and linked to from the object. A background article can be freely structured, but an established encyclopedia article structure is recommended.

Process/ product structure in Intarese

Elements of the Intarese method as developed in SP1 relate to either a process, or a product, or both. The graph below gives an idea of processes and products as developed in the Intarese project (graph should be improved/updated, if we want to present such a graph!) . For all processes and products, information needs to be provided in the guidance system.

When there is a clear 1 – 1 relationship between process and product (eg DALY process – DALY product), we will only ask for description of either process or product, in order to avoid confusion. In most cases, the process is the important object that needs to be described in the method guidebook. When there is no such direct 1 – 1 relationship, we will ask for separate description of process and product. An example of this is the process meta analysis, and the product exposure response function (ERF). Even though the process of meta analysis can lead to an estimation of the ERF, the meta analysis can also lead to an estimation of another product (e.g. severity weight), and an ERF (the product) can also be derived from another process (e.g. expert judgement).

How should an article about disability-adjusted life years be structured? The question is not at all obvious, so the different options were tested in a previous version of this page. Only the conclusions are presented here.

In this ontology, the scope can be seen as a research question. The answer to this question is the result, and the definition tells how this result can be or was achieved.

Approach	Scope	Definition	Result
Method (process description object)	DALY estimation is a process for measuring summarised burden of disease adding up increased mortality (years of life lost) and years lived with disability. Purpose: DALY translates the impacts of diseases into life years based on their severity and duration, so that different diseases can be measured using a single currency, the life year. DALYs are based on disease-specific weights. (In contrast, QALYs evaluate the quality of life in a certain health state, not disease.) The research question: What is a good way to estimate DALYs?	The definition contains the reasoning and motivation for calculating DALYs. It compares and discusses different alternatives. It contains links to methodology articles. It is also open for comments and further developments.	The result describes the state-of-the-art method and formulas. Formula: DALY = life-years lost YLL (due to mortality) + life-years with disease YLD = YLL + number of disease cases * severity weight of the disease * the duration of the disease. The severity weights for diseases come from the variable Variable:Disability-adjusted weights for diseases The result is motivated by the content of the definition. Sub-attributes of the result include input (the upstream variables), procedure (the calculations), and output (format of the process output).

Conclusions:

1. The process description (method) seems to be the most suitable object for DALY. The result attribute of the DALY process description describes the state-of-the-art procedure for estimating DALYs. If there is not a single best method, several methods can be described. The definition would then discuss the good and bad properties of each method, and their limitations. Usually a process is a general one, and therefore it will produce a large number of products for specific purposes in several risk assessments. There is no need to describe a "generalized product", as all general information is already described in the process description.
2. The purpose of all process descriptions is to describe a good process for achieving the outcome described in the scope. Thus, scope belongs to the purpose of a particular process description object.
3. The definition of a process description describes the information you need to understand whether some procedure is suitable and good for the purpose. The definition gives rationale for the procedure selected.
4. To be precise, a process description is a product object that describes how to actually do the work. The doing itself is the process object, but that is something that vanishes as soon as the work is done and the product has been produced. We try to be precise when talking about the process or process description. However, we do not emphasize their differential nature (process vs. product, respectively), because the difference between doing and talking about doing is probably clear to the reader until someone tries to define that difference using metaphysical terminology.

Example: products and processes in the Intarese guidance system