SCoPE

Presentation of first results : The appraisal Framework (AF):

The case studies has shown that :

1. Having a common language to develop an interdisciplinary AF is not evident. This too takes time;
2. Scientific arguments have their importance but local sensitivities are of much bigger importance. The press attention is of outmost importance in the decision making. The role of the mass media is of major importance in reducing or inducing public anxiety, (un)certainty, public perception, … in the whole political decision making process;

The AF may be viewed as a ‘micro-tool’ – micro in the sense that it is mobilized at one point of the multi-sequential decision-making process. Presumably at the endpoint of the expertise production process, at the moment when the outcome of the evaluation process, the integrated information on risks has to be passed on to policy-makers or other end-users. The function of this ‘micro-tool’ is to facilitate the interface between experts and policy-makers who have to share a set of integrated data to compare alternatives. This is the function of an AF built to get visual aid for policy-makers and helps them to adopt an integrated and comparative approach of risks standing on their agendas.
The AF may also be apprehended as a process, the ‘micro-tool generating process’, structuring and supporting the decision-making process. It is meant to promote and organize a mutual learning of all actors entering into the different sequences of decision-making process. The focus shifts from the use of the results of an AF viewed as a micro-tool to the learning process. The functions and modus operandi of both options are complementary rather than mutually exclusive as far as an interest for the output of a process does not annihilate interest for the process itself.
Delineating these two options of the AF helps to clarify the research questions which are partly common and partly different. They mobilize different disciplines and displace the focus of the research either towards the production of the expert knowledge in an integrated way or towards the process of mutual learning through the building of the AF during the decision-making process.

AF as a micro-tool:

In the first option - the AF is apprehended as a micro tool - the main research questions at this stage of the project focus on the dimensions (criteria) that enter into the appraisal framework. The knowledge, mainly scientific, is produced in the expert, scientific sphere. It is integrated through a symmetric approach - soft and hard sciences are engaged (at best into dialogue) rather than mobilized side by side. Some dimensions to be considered within the AF may be derived from literature (see acronym SCoPE). The focus of the research is therefore on the validation/fine-tuning of the hypothetical model which settles the relationships between the dimensions included in the model and the risk assessment, which has to help decision-makers to get an integrated and comparative view of risks on their agenda. This AF can then provide a snapshot vision contributing to integrate in the risk assessment answers to questions such as :

• What are the relevant dimensions?
• What is their relative weight?
• How useful do policy-makers consider the information on these dimensions in their practice? What conditions do they identify as critical to enhance or reduce the usefulness of this information? Concretely, to set priorities in a balanced and transparent way.
• What are actual practices in risk assessment and management (case studies)?
• Are any of the observed practices consistent with the integrated and comparative approach?
• Are there constraints, barriers to these approaches?
• What are these constraints, barriers?
• Are these constraints, barriers trans-situational or contextual (regularities, specificities?).

The four basic criteria of SCoPE (S-Co-P and E, see supra) provide a very aggregated starting point for environmental health risks. But each environmental health problem has its own ‘history’, and level of maturity; and the level of uncertainty depends on maturity level (e.g. more info available for particles than for EMF). Also the level of consensus and participation depends on maturity (e.g. more consensus on soil remediation approach, than on EMF risk management). Should ‘maturity’ be introduced as a fifth basic criterion? And except for perception is it also necessary to take psychosocial effects into account (advice from Ron Franken, MNP).
The micro-tool is more pragmatic with more tangible results and can be considered in many cases as a first level of risk appraisal (screening risks).

AF as a process:

In the second conception of the AF, the underlying logic is less dictated by the production of an outcome which offers the “right” interface between risk assessors and policy makers, but more by the structuring and monitoring of a learning network composed of all the players entering into the decision-making process . Is there a need to select an AF or develop an AF: while different and slightly diverging methods exist, apart from the Dutch AF (which initiated our research), we want to develop and improve the AF more than selecting or rejecting different methods and applications. This issue deals with the added value of the making of an AF compared to the communication of an AF to policy-makers under the format of a report or visual aid or whatever finished set of information to policy makers. The case studies should help us answer two related questions :

1. Are there some indications that these learning processes are at work ? (yes they somehow are)
2. Do these learning processes make the difference ?

Insofar as the AF is the instrument of a learning process, its effectiveness, and even its feasibility depend on many factors such as the organizational structure, the resources devoted to learning, the personality of actors promoting the process etc. The building of the AF is therefore an ad hoc process which has to be designed with regards to its goals, to its participants, its resources. These learning processes can make a difference, although experience is still limited. The process is however costly and time consuming, making it less pragmatic and only to be implemented in a second or third level for persistent and controversial risks.

Another issue is about the rules that should structure the learning process underlying the making of the AF and the contextual factors to be cared for. These rules have to be designed by adaptation of positive experiences (learning process on behalf of the researchers) reported in the literature about “New management practices” particularly related to innovative practices in Canada and Australia. Weaving actors into a network to perform an AF supporting an integrated and comparative approach is innovative. Limited experience exists in Belgium and some have shown how demanding in time and human resource such a process can be. As such, and referring to the scientific literature in the field of sociology of innovation , the transfer of innovating practices is not so much related to the ‘objective quality’ of the innovation but to the conditions of its conception and implementation.
A final issue thus deals with the conditions for a transfer of innovation - for instance the institutional resources needed to get the expected results from the tool. Are these conditions feasible, efficient?

Research questions related with the AF as a process are:

• What are actual practices in risk assessment and management (case studies)?
• Do they support a mutual learning process?
• Who participates to this process?
• At what stage of the decision-making process (risks ranking, alternative options ranking)?
• Are any of the observed practices consistent with mutual learning process?
• Are there constraints, barriers to these approaches?
• What are these constraints, barriers? Are these constraints, barriers trans-situational or contextual (regularities, specificities?)

This will be tested with experts in the next months.