Difference between revisions of "Decision analysis and risk management 2013"

Revision as of 15:52, 16 December 2012

This page is about a course Decision analysis and risk management organised in 2013. For a course organised in 2011, see Decision analysis and risk management.

LIVE FEED FROM LECTURES in 2011

Decision analysis and risk management (DARM) is a course taught in the | University of Eastern Finland (UEF) for Master's (MSc) Degree Programme in General Toxicology and Environmental Health Risk Assessment ToxEn.

NOTE! On this page, there was a list of related further education courses in Kuopio (in Finnish).

Aims of the course

• To give a good overview of modern assessment methods by;
  • utilizing modern web-workspaces for learning, while;
  • avoiding overlaps with other courses in the ToxEn MSc program,

In the course:

The student will learn about the fundamentals of decision analysis, the connections between societal decision-making and risk assessment, and the role of risk management in a broader societal context. The student will learn to apply the scientific method and falsification in the context of risk assessment, and know how to build an assessment based on the requirements of risk management.     

Course details

• Name: Decision analysis and risk management          
• Abbreviation: DARM
• ECTS-credits: 6
• Home page of the course: http://en.opasnet.org/w/Darm
• Degree Programme: ToxEn, Environment health risk assessment
• Teaching Language: English, with Finnish accent
• Offered for Students in Other Universities (JOO-opintoja): Yes

Contacts

• Organising Departments: Department of environmental science (in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Welfare, THL)          
• Course Director: Jukka Juutilainen / Jonne Naarala     
• Teachers: Jouni Tuomisto, Mikko Pohjola, Marko Tainio     
• Contact Persons email: jouni.tuomisto(at)thl.fi     
• Registration for the Course: Wossikka     

Teaching / Learning Methods

• Lectures and discussions 60 h
• Calculation exercises 9 h
• Independent assessment study
  • Decision analysis study (group work) 50 h
  • Risk management study (individual work) 40 h
• Web-Based Learning 30 %

Lectures

See the Content and schedule table for timing, locations, topics and links to materials. One lecture and classroom exercise session is approximately three hours.

Study materials include e.g. PowerPoint files, scanned articles or book chapters, web-sites and web-documents. Due to copy-right reasons, some of the materials are distributed through a password protected HEANDE-page. Passwords to HEANDE will be distributed during the lectures. In the end of the page there are some more links for further information.

Case study exercise

For the case study description and instructions, see the case study exercise page

Note! Self-organised group work requires on-line computers.

Evaluation

Whole course (6 ECTS)

The course grade consists of:

• Completion of classroom exercises (1/3)
• Case study exercise (2/3)
• Active participation in lectures and exercises is taken into account while deciding the overall course grades (e.g. rounding up)

Classroom exercise scoring

• Exercise 1: max. score 5 points
• Exercise 2: no scoring, completion yes/no
• Exercise 3: max. score 5 points
• Exercise 4: max. score 5 points

Total max. score from classroom exercises is 15 points. In addition students earn pluses from extraordinary performance and active participation. Missing exercises 1, 3 or 4 count as 0 points. Missing exercises 2 count as minus (thus counterbalancing pluses).

Case study exercise scoring

• Exercise part 1, DA study plan (group work): max. score 20 points
• Exercise part 2, RM analysis: max. score 10 points

In DA study plan exercise, all group members get the same score. The principles for evaluating the case study exercises are presented on the case study exercise page. With active commenting and discussion in Opasnet both within the group and in between groups and individuals groups and individuals can earn pluses.

Course grading

The below table presents the tentative guidelines for converting exercise scores into the course grade.

The pluses (and minuses) can influence the overall grade in cases where the total exercise scores are close to the limit values. E.g. 35 points from exercises and active participation may be interpreted as grade 4.

Please check the summary table of exercise scores on the corresponding password protected course page in Heande.

Partial accomplishments

For non-ToxEn students it is also possible to accomplish only certain parts of the course:

• Lectures and classroom exercises (3 ECTS)
• Case study exercise part 1: DA study plan (2 ECTS)
• Case study exercise part 2: RM analysis (1 ECTS)

Partial accomplishments will be graded only on a fail/pass scale according to sufficient participation and fulfillment of required exercises.

Content and schedule

60 h lectures, 8 hrs seminars.

MC classrooms are computer classrooms.

This is the content of 2011 course, and it will be updated! Abbreviations: DA = decision analysis, RM = risk management, RA = risk assessment, RC = risk communication.

Introduction to the course

• introduction to decision analysis: slides

Introduction to risk management

• Conventional perspectives to RM: slides
• Additional material
  • Framework for environmental health risk management
  • An introduction to the IRGC risk governance framework
  • Risk governance deficits - Policy brief
  • State of the art in benefit–risk analysis: Environmental health

Introduction to using Opasnet

• Introduction to Opasnet
• Demonstration of structure, content and functionalities
• Exercises
  • user accounts
  • DA study plan page
  • RM report page
  • browsing and searching
  • commenting and discussing
• Additional material
  • Category:DARM exercise#Introduction to working in Opasnet
  • Opasnet
  • Help:Contents

Introduction to probability theory: Slides

• Subjective probability
• Practical exercise
• Bayesian rule
• Importance of exhaustiveness (coverage)
• Additional material: Dennis Lindley: Philosophy of statistics Lindley, a backup file
• Bayes' rule. Updating probability. Examples: red balls, narcolepsy test.

Decision analysis. slides

• Measures of outcome: Utility, DALY, QALY, WTP
• Concepts: decisions, objectives, optimization, uncertainty, decision trees
• Influence diagrams, Bayesian belief nets.
• Purpose of assessment: Why it is done

Modeling and Monte Carlo simulation: slides

• Computer modeling
  • Why?
• Approximation
  • When data is not available
• Monte Carlo simulation
  • When and why to use?
• Common uncertainty distributions
  • Normal distribution is not the only option

Calculation exercise: slides

• Case: Mortality due to PM2.5 in Kuopio
• Additional material Pope et al. 2002

Probabilistic models slides

• Gibbs sampling Bayesian network Hierarchical Bayes model

Calculation exercise of calibration and PM risks with Opasnet R

• Open assessment quiz, heande:Calibration of a group
• Health impacts of PM in Kuopio
• Expert judgement slides
• Additional material: Tuomisto et al: PM expert elicitation

Overall view of different models slides

• Why do we do modelling?
• Producing result from rationale.
  • Deterministic, heuristic, and probabilistic estimates.
  • Functional, differential, logical, and probabilistic relations.
  • Other relations (neural networks).

Decision making under uncertainty

• Why decision analysis?: Slides
• Sensitivity analysis: Slides
• Value of information: Slides
• Additional material:
  • Further information about sensitivity analysis (Frey et al. 2004)
  • Value of information, Value of information analysis
• Assessment performance: Slides
  • quality assurance/quality control
  • uncertainty
  • model performance
  • information in use
  • → Properties of good assessment

Calculation exercise.

• Link to exercise page

Risk management: State-of-the-art?

• lecture: slides
  • perspectives to assessment and management
  • tendencies in EHA and EHRM
  • What is managed, who is responsible, what is included?
  • RM in reality vs. (institutional) RM frameworks
  • contemporary challenges in assessment-management interaction
• discussion:
  • assessment and management in the swine flu case
  • questions, actors, roles in swine flu case RM?
• Additional material:
  • heande:State of the art of environmental health assessment
  • Decision Making for the Environment
  • Risk Assessment in the Federal Government
  • Science and Decisions
  • Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment
  • Understanding Risk (free online version)

Risk management: a social learning perspective

• lecture: slides
  • participation in assessment and management
  • dimensions of openness
  • assessments as collaborative information production projects
• discussion:
  • role of public in swine flu case RM?
  • dimensions of openness -analysis of the narcolepsy study RM
• Additional material: heande:Open participation in environmental health assessment

Risk management: facilitation of (open) risk management

• lecture: slides
  • collective knowledge creation
    • pragmatism, abduction and trialogical approach
    • a game of questions and answers
  • pragmatic knowledge services
  • from an information society towards a knowledge society
• exercise
  • Discussion and structured argumentation in Opasnet
  • argumentation analysis on some swine flu RM related texts
• Additional material:
  • Pragmatic knowledge services
  • Argumentation
  • Pragma-dialectics
  • argumentation theory.

Risk management: from needs to knowledge, knowledge to action

• Lecture: slides
  • Round-up of what has been stated about (open) RM so far
  • It's all about developing shared beliefs to guide action
    • hypothesis development and testing
    • discussion
    • shared belief systems
    • inference rules
    • evaluation of page content in Opasnet
• Discussion
  • Based on the argumentation exercise (1.4.)
• Additional material:
  • Inference rules
  • Scientific method
  • Falsification
  • Justified true belief
  • Shared belief system

Summary of decision analysis and risk management: slides

• Overview of DA, RM, OA & ORM
  • Who needs (uses, makes, understands) DA & RM?
• Examples of past, on-going, and upcoming OA/ORM cases
  • overview
  • model
  • results and analyses
  • conclusions
  • relations to groups' DA study plans
• What's new about the swine flu case?
• Q&A, discussions and group feedback on the course contents and arrangements
• Suggest more topics to be presented or discussed on the last lecture
  • topics can be e.g. some unclear things to be re-reviewed or something you may feel has been missing from the course contents

Final seminar:

• Presentations of DA study plans by groups
  • 5 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for discussion
• Presentations of the RM exercises:
  • 5 minutes for presentation, 10 minutes for discussion

Help and guidance

Help requests or other comments can be posted on the course web-page or the exercise web-page by using the comment boxes on the end of the pages (no user account / log in required) or on the discussion pages.

See also

Links to additional DA materials

Links to additional RM materials

• IRGC risk governance framework
• Risk governance deficits - Analysis and illustration
• Risk assessment and risk management in regulatory decision making
• International Risk Governance Council
• The National Academies Press (publisher of e.g. "red book", "orange book", and "silver book")

Background information about other Decision analysis and risk management study programs in Europe and in USA is provided here: Decision analysis and risk management - background information

NOTE! On this page, there was a list of related further education courses in Kuopio (in Finnish).

Keywords

Risk assessment. Decision analysis. Bayesian theory. Open assessment. Risk management. Societal decision making.     

References

Related files

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