Talk:Intarese

Intarese WP1.4 activities and achievements

Summary of INTARESE WP1.4 activities and achievements for the whole project duration 2005-2011

A contribution to the SP1/Full project final report

In hindsight the overall objectives of WP1.4 can be characterized as having been to:

• Identify and review the main methods and approaches to risk characterization in issues relevant to environment and health.
• Develop a framework that combines and connects these methods and approaches with the broader context of assessment and societal decision making.
• Train the project participants, particularly in SP3, to apply the methods, approaches, and the framework in practical assessment work
• Test the methods, approaches, and the framework in terms of their:
  • acceptability (by training); and
  • applicability and effectiveness (by case studies)
• Publish the developments in risk characterization as:
  • INTARESE guidance system (IEHIAS) content; and
  • scientific journal articles

In the early phases of the project there were altogether eight partners in the work package, but as the efforts were reallocated and refocused along the course of the project, the number of participants during the last years of the project was reduced to five (THL, USTUTT, RIVM, PBL, IC). Also the detailed plans and task descriptions changed several times along the way as the project progressed and new knowledge emerged. However, at the end of the project, it can be seen that the majority of all work done within the WP did, after all, promote the endeavor of striving towards the goals of the WP. In the end many of the objectives were fulfilled, at least in a satisfactory manner, but on the other hand we also fall somewhat short regarding some objectives.

The deliverables on risk characterization methodology and protocol, and corresponding contributions to the INTARESE guidance system (IEHIAS) content, altogether describe a new perspective to creating and using knowledge in assessment and societal decision making upon issues relevant to environment and health. It is probably best described as the collaborative perspective to environmental health assessment. In brief, assessment is not seen as a task for experts, separated from the tasks of decision-makers. Instead, assessment is seen as a collaborative or group effort aiming at developing shared understanding about health impacts ("what do we know about health impacts such that is useful to improve health"), and risk management is seen as a closely related group effort which only has a slightly different focus ("what do we know about what should be done, now that we have learned about health impacts").

WP1.4 was able to develop a fairly coherent view of participatory assessments. Risk characterisation is not seen as a phase of work in the end of the assessment process. Rather, it is an idea that assessment as a whole is a process of characterising relevant risks for the group that is participating, until the characterisation is satisfactory for the practical needs of the users. WP1.4 also developed a lot of practices and web tools to enable such characterisation work to take place. Some of these were tested during the fifth year (see below), but many things have not yet met their practical challenges in real-world assessments with large-scale participation.

Specific aspects of this perspective are also scrutinized and presented in more detail in the scientific articles already published and manuscripts to be published, written by the WP participants. In terms of developing new ideas and publishing them, the WP can be considered to having performed relatively well.

In terms of disseminating and applying the new knowledge within the project, the WP was not quite as successful. Perhaps this can be partially attributed to the scheduling and overall dynamics of the project as other WP’s in SP1 also faced similar difficulties. The fact, however, is that the SP3 case studies were mainly conducted without much attention to the developments of WP1.4, or other SP1 WP’s for that matter. As the supply and demand for methodological guidance in SP1 and SP3, respectively, did not quite meet as intended, the main fora for disseminating WP 1.4 outputs were the open assessment workshops held in Kuopio. These workshops that also attracted participants from other projects were very influential in terms of presentation, discussion, and development of different aspects of the new perspective to risk characterization, particularly its collaborative aspects. In the end, some of the methods and aspects of the collaborative perspective were tested, at least in terms of plausibility, in certain parts of the Common Case Study (WP4.3).

Many new ideas developed in WP1.4 were so unorthodox that they received either active opposition or plain ignorance. One of the lessons was that willingness to test new, possibly false or stupid ideas was quite low and occurred mainly in a group of enthusiastic PhD students. On the one hand, this slowed down the development process, as practical knowledge about what works and what doesn't didn't accumulate as wished for. On the one hand, this created a unique positive atmosphere among that unprejudiced group. This outcome is likely to maintain active collaboration between the people in the group also in the future. But in addition to its use value, it has clearly had its intrinsic value. A practical example of the attitude and a sign of intrinsic results was seen in 2008 when a part of the group built two igloos and slept in them during a cold Finnish winter night.

Timeline of work in WP1.4

The original key objectives for the first phase of this work package were:

• To review and evaluate a number of current methods and their use for risk characterisation including:
  • health impact assessment (HIA),
  • disability-adjusted life years (DALY),
  • cost-benefit analysis (CBA), impact pathway methodology (IPM),
  • Bayesian belief networks (BBN),
  • value-of-information (VOI) method.
• To develop a meta-framework, an environment and health planner, and evaluate its usability in this project.
• To review the WHO 'Environmental health indicators for Europe' project and incorporate relevant practices into the procedures utilised in INTARESE.
• To enhance the integration of the methods reviewed, and the methods developed in other WPs in SP1.
• To provide the new methodology for use in SP3 policy analyses, to collect feedback from SP3 and SP5 on various stages during the project, and incorporate that into an updated methodology.

Work in the first reporting period focused on developing the foundations for a coherent methodology for risk characterisation, for application in the SP3 case studies specifically, and for integrated risk assessment more generally. To this end, the work package started with a scoping phase, aimed at defining the range of relevant indicators that might be used for risk characterisation under different circumstances. This was based on a review of the literature, consultation with partners and brainstorming by the work package team. A draft summary report about DALYs, HIA and impact pathways was completed.

As a context for risk characterisation, a meta-framework was also developed and reported in draft form. This is intended to define the ‘rules for engagement’ in risk characterisation, including the ways in which key stakeholders can be involved in framing issues, defining indicators and interpreting their results.

The third main task has been to review Bayesian belief networks and value-of-information methods, as tools for risk characterisation. A preliminary draft of this has been compiled on Bayesian methods, and work on VOI is about to start.

The second year contained the following activities and achievements:

• D17 Risk characterization methodology review: indicator selection and specification, VOI, CEA and CBA, monetization of impacts, DALY, Bayesian analysis, BBN, HIA, IPA, risk perception & MNP environment and health planner
• D16 Risk characterisation protocol: general properties of good risk assessments, overview of Intarese general method, collaborative work in risk assessment, managing stakeholder involvement, collective structured learning.
• Contribution to the SP3 Training workshop on WP1.4 Causal networks and indicator selection, 22-23 May 2007.
• Provide guidance to SP3 on several issues: issue framing and causal network descriptions, indicator selection and specification, variable definition and structure, purpose and properties of good risk assessments, value judgements in risk assessment, collective structured learning, mass collaboration and stakeholder involvement, dealing with disputes, value of information.
• Implementing the risk characterization protocol in toolbox design.
• Toolbox design meeting in Oslo 1-3 August.
• Selected Intarese method, assessment protocol and toolbox descriptions in Intarese-wiki compiled into an Open Risk Assessment book.

During the third year of the project, the work in this WP has been mainly focused on disseminating information about the risk characterisation methods and protocol and also developing tools for supporting their use.

The information dissemination has taken place in the form of the 2nd Kuopio risk assessment workshop, held in February 2008, and preparing manuscripts based on the developments in this WP. The planned demand-driven guidance to SP3 cases has not realized due to lack of demand from the SP3 case teams.

The work on developing supporting tools for the risk characterisation protocol and methods has been realized in development of a tool for calculating health impacts in DALYs as well as development of both the content and functionalities on the open assessment website called Opasnet (http://opasnet.org, formerly Heande: http://heande.pyrkilo.fi).

As the third year has drawn closer to its end, also evaluation, testing and improvement of the methods and protocol have become timely. The protocol and methods are being evaluated based on the experiences of SP3 cases during the 1st pass in order to identify and address the main points of improvement. The methods and protocol have also been planned to be tested and developed in a case study during the fourth year of the project.

The fourth year of the project started with the main emphasis on a case study for testing the risk characterization methods and tools developed in this WP. As the WP4.3 mega case study planning progressed, it was decided that the case study be merged with the mega case. Consequently the method and tool testing has now become rather a part of WP4.3 than WP1.4. Notable amount of work was anyhow done under this WP in scoping the case study assessment. Participation in the scientific Climate Congress in Copenhagen in March 2009 was also a part of that scoping work.

After some reallocation of work distribution among WP’s, the WP1.4 work returned back to basics, meaning protocol updating, guidance system content creation and, most of all, writing manuscripts in order to publish the results of the research in this WP. One article has already been published, one manuscript is to be submitted before the end of year 4, and work is on-going on a few more manuscripts to be submitted later. The protocol updating work has been taking place continuously in Opasnet, an open collaborative assessment workspace, and parts of this work have also been already imported to the guidance system. A separate deliverable report summarizing the major updates to the risk characterization protocol was compiled.

The open assessment workshop, addressing also the main developments in risk characterization achieved by this WP, was organized by THL in February 2009 in Kuopio.

During the fifth year a large part of the planned WP1.4 work was redirected into WP4.3 to produce sub-assessments to the Common Case Study. The sub-assessments were used to test functionalities of the collaborative workspace Opasnet to host openly performed assessments in the spirit that was developed in WP1.4. Collaboration as such was not tested, only the tools that are needed to enable open participation to make assessments. Three major functionalities were tested and proved to be functional.

1. Wiki-based workspace Opasnet for writing and commenting descriptions about the assessment content.
2. Opasnet Base, a database that was developed in Heimtsa for storing background incidence information but can now be used for storing any input data needed in assessments or intermediate or final results produced by assessments.
3. Statistical software R that is embedded in Opasnet in such a way that each part of an assessment can be modelled and run separately with open code within the workspace. In this way, parts can also be used in several assessments simultaneously enabling coherent analyses: radon and dampness sub-assessments shared several parts although they were otherwise independent.

Apart from the Common Case Study, WP1.4 focussed on reporting its main methodological developments in the IEHIAS website, Opasnet workspace, and scientific manuscripts. The main topics include e.g. participation in assessments, performance of assessments, and comparison of different assessment approaches.