Difference between revisions of "Societal context of assessments"

Revision as of 11:19, 8 February 2008

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It is important to consider and understand the role of risk assessment in its societal context and to identify the relations of risk assessment with its surrounding reality. The following diagram shows a roughly simplified description of the role and relations of risk assessment in the overall process of societal decision making from the risk assessor's point of view. The diagram is described briefly below.

The risk assessment process (horizontal oval) produces a a risk assessment product (vertical oval) as its output with the intention of feeding it as an input to the decision-making process. The decision-making process then produces a decision, presumably using the risk assessment product as an input alongside other inputs. The decision is then executed leading to specific consequences within the society. The white boxes on the background depict the primary areas of interest and influence of risk assessors (RA), decision-makers (DM) and stakeholders (SH). The other factors nodes refer to all the other influences to the processes along the chain that are primarily out of reach of the influence of the risk assessors and thus may either support or compromise the effectiveness of the risk assessment outputs. The arrows in this diagram describe causal relations.

The diagram above can be considered as distinguishing the groups of actors along the chain and their roles in a relatively traditional way. The risk assessors (RA) could also be replaced with a more general group called the contributors to risk assessment and the distinction between the decision-maker and stakeholder groups can be considered as artificial. The new approaches to risk assessment blur the lines between the roles of these different groups making more or less everyone a stakeholder and also a potential contributor to risk assessment. These views are considered in more detail in mass collaboration and Organizing stakeholder involvement. However, the above diagram represents the currently existing reality and the common perceptions of risk assessment and societal decision making relatively well.

The assessment product is the center of attention when considering risk assessment. It is the manifestation of the assessment process that produces it. Ultimately it is, however, the process of using the risk assessment product and the intended or expected consequences of that, which set the requirements for what the assessment product should be like and how it is to be produced. In other words: the intended use purpose defines the assessment product, which then defines the process of producing it.

Since, normally the risk assessors, or more generally the contributors to risk assessment, can only have direct influence to the assessment product and the process of producing it, but it is anyhow the use process that set the requirements for them, risk assessments can not be carried out in isolation from the societal decision-making. Instead, risk assessment should be seen as interpretation of scientific information for the use of the society. Risk assessment is thus an activity that takes place in the interface between science and society.

In order to be able to address this issue properly it is reasonable to consider the sphere of risk assessments to cover three different individual, but inter-related parts:

• risk assessment process
• risk assessment product
• use process(es), relating roughly to everything from decision-making process onwards

Assessment process is about collecting scientific information and values from various different kinds of sources and synthesizing them into the form of a risk assessment product. An assessment product is a description of a particular piece of reality produced according to the needs it is intended to address. These needs are derived from the use process and translated into the purpose and scope and other structural requirements for the assessment product.

Classification of potential users of assessment outputs

Users and use purposes of the method

A spectrum of different potential users of the new risk assessment method can be described e.g. as:

• A Scientists, risk assessors in administration, or consultants working for administration on the European level.
• B Scientists, risk assessors in administration, or consultants working for administration on the national level.
• C Risk assessors in administration or consultants working for administration on the community level.
• D Authorities involved in managing risks but not actually qualified in making risk assessments (any level).
• E Political decision-makers (any level).
• F Representatives of the industry or business.
• G Representatives of NGOs.
• H Citizens directly affected by the risk assessment outcomes.
• I Anyone interested.

A spectrum of different kinds of use purposes by different users of the method can be described e.g. as in the table. Also tentative priorities have been given for the toolbox to facilitate different uses for different users (XXX = high importance, XX = moderate importance, X = potential importance, empty cell = no identified need or low importance).