Risk Assessment (WP4)
Leader WP4: Werner Brack; UFZ, Germany
Objectives
- To create a general knowledge base on risk assessment approaches and results that were delivered by EU-funded and national projects
- To integrate the concepts, approaches, and models designed for the assessment of specific risks (like e.g. climate change, erosion, toxic pressure etc) into a common scheme of integrated risk assessment
- To disseminate the developed tools and to promote their integration into environmental regulatory and management frameworks
- To identify still existing gaps in methodology and knowledge and to define future research needs to fill these gaps towards scientifically sound, harmonised and end-user friendly approaches for an integrated risk assessment.
Description of work
Risk assessment methodologies and results of major projects (among others MODELKEY, ALARM, NoMiracle, AquaTerra, IMAGETOX, BEAM, REBECCA, EUFRAM, HAIR, Euro-limpacs) addressing stresses and risks on river basins (among others climate change, toxic pressure, eutrophication, acidification, invasive species including associated risks and stresses) will be compiled in an international workshop organised in working groups. The working groups will reflect the three modules of risk assessment including (i) impact analysis that focuses on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of effects and impacts of stressors, mechanistic approaches and joint effects, (ii) exposure analysis that focuses on stressor intensity in the environment such as predicted exposure to chemicals and nutrients and predicted changes in climate and water cycles, (iii) risk assessment that focuses on state-of-the-art and newly developed probabilistic approaches and risk indexes assessing the risk of stressors to cause harms. This also allows for the quantification of variation and uncertainty.
In addition, these approaches consider improved methods and models for toxicity identification, toxicity prediction, partitioning between compartments in the environment and into biota as well as joint effects of mixtures.
In a second step, a workshop will focus on the (i) integration of concepts, approaches, and models designed for the assessment of specific risks into a common scheme of integrated risk assessment, (ii) dissemination of the developed tools and integration into environmental regulatory and management frameworks and (iii) identification of still existing gaps in methodology and knowledge and definition of future research needs to fill these gaps towards scientifically sound, harmonised and end-user friendly approaches for an integrated risk assessment.
The results of both workshops will be compiled and integrated in several book chapters compiling the knowledge required by scientists and regulators for state-of-the art risk assessment in science and decision making.
Hence, WP 4 will organise the following three events:
- 1st workshop: on risk assessment methodologies currently used.
- 2nd workshop: on integrated risk assessment, dissemination and definition of future research needs
- writing meeting: Overall WP 4 outcome synthesis in a meeting with selected WP core-team members aimed at producing the manuscript for one or more chapters in the RISKBASE scientific book