CEM 403- Environmental Risk Assessment
This course begins by examining the definition of risk in the context of environmental management, and compares expert and layman approaches to risk assessment. Course content looks at exposure measurement, toxicology, and epidemiology as ways to assess environmental risk in terms of effects on human health and safety. Difficulties inherent to such analyses (e.g., cumulative and synergistic effects, uncertainty) are also addressed. Students consider different approaches to risk management (prevention, mitigation, compensation) as well as the regulatory and legislative context to risk assessment and management.
Instructor: Sharonna Greenberg
Risk assessment is a critical element of environmental management. However, the term “risk” does not have a single unambiguous definition. In this course we begin by examining the definition of risk in the context of environmental management, and compare experts’ and laymen’s approaches to risk assessment. We look at exposure measurement, toxicology, and epidemiology as ways to assess environmental risk in terms of effects on human health and safety; difficulties inherent to such analyses (e.g., cumulative and synergistic effects, uncertainty) are addressed. We also cover tools used to analyze technology and process-related risks, such as failure mode analysis and fault trees.
In addition to direct human impacts, environmental risk also implies threats to non-human species and entire ecosystems (the effects of which may in turn indirectly threaten humans). Assessing risk in non-human terms further complicates the necessary analysis because of the need to decide on additional metrics, and because of the scale and complexity of the affected natural systems. We will begin to explore some of these challenges in the course.
Risk assessment is just the beginning of the story when it comes to the role of risk in environmental management. We will consider different approaches to risk management (prevention, mitigation, compensation) as well as the regulatory and legislative context to risk assessment and management. Finally, we will take a look at risk communication, referring back to the issues raised in the rest of the course.
Risk assessment is a very broad and deep subject; each topic covered in this course could easily be the subject of a full course of its own. As such, this should be considered a survey course introducing students to the major elements of risk assessment. Note also that we will not be going very deep into the technical aspects of risk assessment. Students with professional experience in this area are encouraged to share their experience with the class when it is relevant to the topics being covered.