Kuopio Risk Assessment Workshop 2008

Kuopio risk assessment workshop 2008 is the second workshop about new methods in risk assessment, organised by the National Public Health Institute (KTL), Kuopio, Finland. Its main purpose is to promote the idea and practice of Open Risk Assessment, and further develop methods to perform them. The workshop has started from the needs of several EU-funded research projects, notably Intarese, Beneris, and Heimtsa. The workshop is mainly directed to doctoral students working in the fields of environmental health or risk assessment, but it is also open to anyone interested. If you want to join the workshop, please create a user account (by following the log in/create account link in the right-top corner of the page) with your contact information and add your username to the list on the bottom of this page. There is no deadline for registration nor a registration fee for the workshop, but early registration is highly recommended in order to help both the organizers and the participants to arrange the facilities, programs etc.

General information

Time:	18.2 - 22.2.2008
Place:	KTL, Kuopio, Finland
Organizer:	National Public Health Institute (KTL), Department of Environmental Health

<googlemap lat="62.903976" lon="27.638855" type="map" zoom="11" width="375"> 62.893334, 27.679328, Kuopio, Finland 62.890603, 27.627397, KTL Neulaniementie 4, 70701 Kuopio, Finland </googlemap>

Description

The workshop will focus on Open Risk Assessment (ORA), namely:

The theoretical considerations behind ORA
Methods to put the theory into practice
Technical facilitation of applying the methods
Group work on a real-life risk assessment case

The workshop will consist of lectures on Open Risk Assessment theory and methods and applying the methods to describe and evaluate a real-life risk assessment case using the software tools that have been and are being developed for the purpose.

Lectures and exercises

There will be daily lectures on Open Risk Assessment, starting from the very principles and proceeding towards more specific issues of different aspects of the method. The lecture topics are/will be chosen so that they will support the group work case as it proceeds. On the first day of the workshop there will also be some exercises on using the software tools, namely Mediawiki and Analytica, that will be used in the group work.

Group work

Alongside the lectures, there will be a group work case study on a real-life risk assessment. The case study will be about health impacts of Helsinki bus traffic. The material to be used in the case study will be taken from an already conducted risk assessment (known as the Gasbus project) and the group work tasks will be related to 1) converting the risk assessment model and documentation into the Open Risk Assessment information structure and 2) evaluating the assessment according to the Open Risk Assessment method. In practice this will happen as creating a number of wiki-pages (variables) and then deliberating the contents of these pages as well as the whole assessment that they comprise. The work will be chopped into bite-size pieces so that the whole group of participants can be divided into small groups of ca. 2-4 people working on their own part of the assessment. In the end all the different parts will be compiled into one complete assessment (description and evaluation) and scrutinized together as whole group.

Facilities

Working space for all participants will be arranged either at the premises of KTL or nearby Kuopio University or both. Each participant should bring along a laptop computer. If this is not possible for you, please let us know well in advance and we will see what we can do about it. KTL can provide the educational licenses of Analytica modelling software for those who do not already have it installed in their computers.

If there will be people who would like to participate in the workshop, but cannot personally come to Kuopio to attend the workshop, a web-conference access will be provided for the lecture sessions using Skype. The case study will be worked on using the Heande website. We will try to arrange lectures in a way that people can attend the lectures via Internet (and possibly even participate). Group work will be mostly done in the Internet anyway, so also outsiders can take part in that. This way you may also participate from wherever you are, as most major things - except the social programme - will be made available via Internet.

Workshop program

The daily workshop program will follow the same structure for the whole week:

Morning session, incl. practical arrangements 9:00 - 11:45
Lunch 11:45 - 12:45
Afternoon session 12:45 - 16:45

Daily topics:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Morning	Lecture: Introduction to Open Risk Assessment (ORA) Purpose of ORA Process, product and use open participation	Lecture: Information structure of ORA context, assessment, variable name, scope, definition, result content, description and discussion	Lecture: Communication as a part of ORA process discussion, commenting and argumentation moderation and quality control	Lecture: Evaluating performance of ORA properties of good RA relations between properties and information structure evaluation as an inherent part of the process	Group work: Improvement of the assessment assessment descriptions variable descriptions linkages between variables
Afternoon	Group work: Introduction to wiki and Analytica	Group work: Creating variables in small groups	Group work: Compiling the variables into an assessment	Group work: Evaluation of the assessment	Wrap-up of the group work and the workshop

Social program

In addition to lectures and group-work, there will naturally be a great social program including e.g. winter sports. More information on the social program coming soon.

Accommodation information

Due to unexpected demand of student apartments in Kuopio This year, it appears that the Kuopio student housing company is unable to provide their student apartments for our use during the workshop (with the exception that for Vlasta and Klinga, who have informed of their need to stay for 2 weeks in kuopio, we have been able to arrange student apartment rooms). Therefore, the accommodation for the workshop participants will be arranged through Hotel Savonia (see below for further information).

We have negotiated a reasonable agreement with Hotel Savonia for the workshop participants. The prices for Hotel Savonia are as follows (including breakfast buffet, free use of sauna + swimming pool and gym):

1 person room 75 €/night
2 person room 90 €/night

If staying in 2 person rooms and staying only for the duration of the workshop, the accommodation costs per person will not differ much from the originally planned student apartment accommodation option. However, staying in 1 person rooms or staying in Kuopio significantly longer than just for the workshop, the accommodation costs will unfortunately be higher than that originally planned.

If the recent changes in the accommodation organizations should for any reason should not suit you, please inform us as soon as possible and we will try to look for other options. It may also be possible to accommodate some of the participants in the Kuopio university guest rooms or other similar facilities.

Attendees

Please list your name and organisation here: (Requires login)

Locals (no accommodation needeed):

Foreign (accommodation needed):

James Grellier, Imperial College London
Vlasta Svecova, IEM AS CR (accommodation from 11th to 23th February)
Nina Iszatt, Imperial College London
Kinga Lancz, Slovak medical university SR (accommodation from 11th to 22nd of February)
Lubica Palkovicova, Slovak medical university SR
Jana Tulinska, Slovak Medical University
Antonio Gasparrini, LSHTM, London
Danielle Vienneau, Imperial College London
Matteo Prandi, Hylobates Consulting Srl
Anne Knol, RIVM
Eva Kunseler, MNP