Risks and decisions for conservation and environmental management / Mark Burgman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Burgman, Mark A., author.

Series:

Ecology, biodiversity, and conservation.

Ecology, biodiversity, and conservation

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmental risk assessment.

Environmental management.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 488 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Risks & Decisions for Conservation & Environmental Management

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book outlines how to conduct a complete environmental risk assessment. The first part documents the psychology and philosophy of risk perception and assessment, introducing a taxonomy of uncertainty and the importance of context. It provides a critical examination of the use and abuse of expert judgement and goes on to outline approaches to hazard identification and subjective ranking that account for uncertainty and context. The second part of the book describes technical tools that can assist risk assessments to be transparent and internally consistent. These include interval arithmetic, ecotoxicological methods, logic trees and Monte Carlo simulation. These methods have an established place in risk assessments in many disciplines and their strengths and weaknesses are explored. The last part of the book outlines some new approaches, including p-bounds and information-gap theory, and describes how quantitative and subjective assessments can be used to make transparent decisions.

Contents:

Cover; Half-title; Series-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgements; 1 Values, history and perception; 1.1 Uncertainty and denial; 1.2 Chance and belief; 1.3 The origin of ideas about risk; 1.4 Perception; 1.5 The pathology of risk perception; 1.6 Discussion; 2 Kinds of uncertainty; 2.1 Epistemic uncertainty; 2.2 Linguistic uncertainty; 2.3 Discussion; 3 Conventions and the risk management cycle; 3.1 Risk assessments in different disciplines; 3.2 A common context for environmental risk assessment; 3.3 The risk management cycle; 3.4 Discussion

4 Experts, stakeholders and elicitation4.1 Whos an expert?; 4.2 Who should be selected?; 4.3 Eliciting conceptual models; 4.4 Eliciting uncertain parameters; 4.5 Expert frailties; 4.6 Are expert judgements any good?; 4.7 When experts disagree; 4.8 Behavioural aggregation; 4.9 Numerical aggregation; 4.10 Combined techniques; 4.11 Using expert opinion; 4.12 Who's a stakeholder?; 4.13 Discussion; 5 Conceptual models and hazard assessment; 5.1 Conceptual models; 5.2 Hazard identification and assessment; 5.3 Discussion; 6 Risk ranking; 6.1 Origins of risk ranking methods; 6.2 Current applications

6.3 Conducting a risk ranking analysis6.4 Pitfalls; 6.5 Performance; 6.6 Examples; 6.7 Discussion; 7 Ecotoxicology; 7.1 Dose-response relationships; 7.2 Extrapolation; 7.3 Deciding a safe dose; 7.4 Transport, fate and exposure; 7.5 Examples; 7.6 Discussion; 8 Logic trees and decisions; 8.1 Event trees; 8.2 Fault trees; 8.3 Logic trees and decisions; 8.4 Discussion; 9 Interval arithmetic; 9.1 Worst case analysis; 9.2 Defining and eliciting intervals; 9.3 Interval arithmetic; 9.4 Discussion; 10 Monte Carlo; 10.1 The modelling process; 10.2 Kinds of distributions

10.3 Choosing the right distributions10.4 Generating answers; 10.5 Dependencies; 10.6 Extensions of Monte Carlo; 10.7 Sensitivity analyses; 10.8 Some examples; 10.9 How good are Monte Carlo predictions?; 10.10 p-bounds; 10.11 Discussion; 11 Inference, decisions, monitoring and updating; 11.1 Monitoring and power; 11.2 Calculating power; 11.3 Flawed inference and the precautionary principle; 11.4 Overcoming cognitive fallacies: confidence intervals and detectable effect sizes; 11.5 Control charts and statistical process control; 11.6 Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves

11.7 Discussion12 Decisions and risk management; 12.1 Policy and risk; 12.2 Strategic decisions; 12.3 Stochastic analyses and decisions; 12.4 Info-gaps; 12.5 Evaluating attitudes to decisions; 12.6 Risk communication; 12.7 Adaptive management, precaution and stakeholder involvement; 12.8 Conclusions; Glossary; References; Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. [457]-483) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-13958-9

1-280-41568-1

0-511-17135-8

0-511-08216-9

0-511-19705-5

0-511-32399-9

0-511-61427-6

0-511-08171-5

OCLC:

252490948