Decision analysis and risk management 2013/Homework

Homework 1: Mikko Pohjola's thesis

Due date: 10 Jan

Read (or browse) Mikko's thesis (in heande, username and password needed) and provide brief answers to three (3) questions from the following question list. You are free to choose which questions to answer. Write your answers on your own Opasnet user page. Instructions on creating a user account and editing your own user page will be given on first lecture. In case of difficulties in wiki editing, write your answers on a separate document and copy them to your user page later. The questions and answers will be discussed on the second lecture (10 Jan). A sufficient length for each answers is a few sentences or bullet points. Please do not write lengthy essays, but instead try to identify and briefly describe the main points relevant in each question. The idea of this homework is not to find the right or correct answers, but instead to introduce the conceptual basis of this course to the students.

Questions:

1. What is the main purpose of environmental health assessment?
2. What is pragmatism?
3. What are the main differences between regulatory and academic assessment approaches? Give examples of each.
4. What are the main differences between traditional and novel assessment approaches? Give examples of each.
5. What are the main differences between open assessment and most other assessment approaches?
6. What is benefit-risk assessment?
7. What is impact assessment?
8. What different purposes are there for participation in assessment and/or decision making?
9. What are the dimensions of openness?
10. What relevant stakeholder roles are there in environmental health assessment and related decision making
11. What is effectiveness' in the context of environmental health assessment and related decision making?
12. What is the trialogical approach to knowledge creation and learning?
13. What is decision support?
14. What is a pragmatic knowledge service?
15. What is collaboration?
16. What are the properties of good assessment?
17. What is the role of modelling in assessment and policy making?
18. What parts does the framework for effective assessment and knowledge-based policy consist of?
19. What does it mean that the results of assessments can be considered intentional artifacts?

Homework 2: Basic concepts of open assessment

Due date: 11 Jan

• Task: Read the introductory pages listed below and write one question that you think needs clarification. The questions will be answered during the next lecture.

Add your question below

• Are the methods and solutions which are used for Kuopio climate change by 2020 sufficient to challenge against possible climate change and reduce them to the safe level and if not what other methods required to be taken into account because at the moment 13 coal sites still active in Finland?
• What does the page type 'nugget' mean ?
• Does a encyclopedia article explain the topic so that everyone can understand it or is it ment only to experts?
• What is R code and how does it work?
• If the thing which risk assessment deals with is so called hot topic and open assessment includes many participants how we handle situation so that discussion does not ramble? In otherwise, how we keep inrelevant information away
• How effective is the supervising in Opasnet, for example if someone writes some wrong information in purpose and just want to harm the website, how long it takes that someone In Opasnet notice that?
• Although the open assessment method was originally developed for providing solutions to the environment health problems, are there today any real applications on economic issues?
• How is PSSP used in assessments? Are there examples of it in Opasnet that could help to understand the methodology better? EmmaA

Homework 3: Draft of an assessment

Due date: 21 jan

• Task: With your pair, draft an assessment about the topic agreed on during the lecture. Write the draft assessment on either your or your partner's user page (and put a link to it on the other's user page). Copy the headings and explanations below to the page and use them as template.

Scope

Defines the purpose of the assessment: why is it done?

Question

A research question that the assessment attempts to answer.

Intended use and users

List of users that are supposed to need the assessment. Also, how do we expect them to use the information?

Participants

Who is needed to participate to make the assessment a well-balanced and well-informed work? Also, if specific reasons exists: who is not allowed to participate and why?

Scenarios

Decisions and decision options considered. Also, if scenarios (defined here as delibarate deviations from the truth) are used, they are described here. For example this is a scenario: "Let's assume that the whole population is exposed as much as the maximally exposed individual, because we want to see if even the worst-case scenario causes concern."

Analyses

What statistical or other analyses are needed to be able to produce results that are useful for making conclusions about the question?

Answer

Results

What are the results of the analysis?

Conclusion

What is the conclusion about the question based on the results obtained?

Rationale

Endpoints

• What are the stakeholders that we should consider?
• What are the endpoints that a stakeholder is interested in? How would the stakeholder summarise the endpoints to derive an overall preference ranking for outcomes of decision options? Think about this separately for each stakeholder.

Variables

• What are the issues that should be looked at to be able to understand the outcomes of the decision options?
• Typically, with health impact assessments:
  • What emissions and exposures should be considered?
  • What health endpoints should be considered?
  • What exposure-response functions should be considered?
  • What population subgroups should be considered?