General assessment processes

<accesscontrol>Members of projects</accesscontrol>

The process of carrying out a risk assessment can be considered as consisting of four simultaneously on-going sub-processes that are continuous throughout the whole risk assessment D↷:

1. collection of scientific information and value judgements
2. synthesis and manipulation of scientific information and value judgements
3. communication of the outcomes of collection and synthesis
4. management of collection, synthesis and communication sub-processes

The risk assessment process is continuous interplay of these four sub-processes that may appear in different forms during different phases of the process (for description of the phases see Template:The phases of a risk assessment.

1. Collection of scientific information and value judgments can be considered as gathering these information types or meta-information about them and bringing it available for the participants of the risk assessment. Within the collection sub-process, the information stays freely structured, i.e. is not formalized according to the risk assessment information structure.
2. Synthesis of scientific information and value judgments can then be described as adapting the collected information into the form of risk assessment information structure. This formalized information can be also further manipulated within the assessment, in the form of the information structure.
3. Communication means that the outcomes of the collection and synthesis that become manifested in the (intermediate) risk assessment product also need to be communicated among the participants of the assessment.
4. The management sub-process is managing the processes of collection and synthesis of scientific information and value judgments, and communication. This also includes technical facilitation of the other sub-processes.

The outcome of the whole process, the assessment product, is a causal network description of the relevant phenomena related directly or indirectly to the endpoints of the assessment, in accordance with the purpose of the assessment. The final description should thus:

• Address all the relevant issues as variables
• Describe the causal relations between the variables
• Explain how the variable result estimates are come up with
• Report the variables of greatest interest and conclusions about them to the users

The greatest improvement, and at the same time challenge, in the new risk assessment method is the explicit emphasis on causality throughout the source-impact chain. Although it may often be very difficult to exactly describe causal relations in the form of e.g. mathematical formulae, the causalities should not be neglected. By means of coherent causal network descriptions that cover the whole source-impact chains it is possible to understand the phenomena and to be able to deal with changes that may take place in any variables in the causal network.

Even if the result estimates for individual variables were come up with by means of measurements, model runs, external reference data or expert judgments, the causal relations between variables should be attempted to be defined simultaneously. The least is to have statements about the existence of causal linkages, although they may be vaguely understood and defined. During the assessment the estimation of variable results should be an iterative interplay between information from data sources and definition of causal relations.

It is quite a long, and not necessarily at all a straightforward, way from creating a general view of the assessment question to creating a complete causal network description of the phenomena of interest. Some of the challenges on this way are:

• What are the all the relevant issues that should be covered in the assessment?
• How are the causal relations between variables defined and described?
• How are the individual variables defined and described?
• What is the right level of detail in describing variables?
• What are the most important issues within the assessment that should be communicated to the users of the output?

Below is a diagram that schematically describes the evolution of an assessment product developing from identification of the assessment purpose to a complete causal network desription. The diagram is a rough simplification of the process, although the arrows between the nodes pointing both ways try to emphasize the iterative nature of the process. The diagram rather describes a gradual transition of focus along the progress of work than subsequent events taking place in separate phases.

In the diagram below, the boxes represent different developmental steps of the assessment product which are representations of the improving understanding about the assessed phenomena and simultaneously the focus of attention as the process progresses towards its goals. The activities are considered to take place in between the boxes. The diagram is made in the form of a workflow description and it does not explicitly address e.g. questions of collaboration and interaction between different contributors to the assessment.

The progress of the assessment process and the development of the product along these phases is described in more detail in the phase-specific descriptions. However, it should yet again be reminded that the above description is a rough simplification and that in practice there are several different iteration loops of defining, refining and re-defining the causal network description as the process progresses.