Peer Review as a QA Tool in Environmental Applications

Peer Review is commonly applied during the final stage of a project and is used in the science community to determine the soundness of a conclusion and if the quality of information meets the standards of the scientific and technical community. Quality Assurance and Quality Control procedures are most effective when applied to planning, then during the process stage of a project, and during the review of a product. The gold standard for validating the quality of a study's results is comparison with a referenced data set, model, or result (Azouzi, 1999). However, costs can severely limits this approach for many applications. This article proposes an additional means for quality assessment using peer review as a quality assessment tool during the planning, process, and review of a project.