Ecological risk assessment, prediction, and assessing risk predictions

Area of Science:

• Environmental Science
• Risk Assessment
• Adaptive Management

Background:

• Ecological risk assessment (ERA) within adaptive management frameworks is the global standard for managing environmental risks from development.
• Disseminating ERA approaches and their efficacy is key to continuous improvement.
• Existing literature often compares methods generally, but lacks post hoc performance assessments of specific ERA predictions and models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To highlight the scarcity of post-construction evaluations of ecological risk assessment (ERA) accuracy and model performance.
• To emphasize the importance of assessing the "assessment of the assessment" for improving ERA practices.
• To argue that this gap limits the advancement of ecological risk assessment methodologies.

Main Methods:

• Review of literature on ecological risk assessment (ERA) practices.
• Analysis of the commonality of post-construction performance evaluations for ERAs used in development approvals.
• Conceptual argument for the necessity of "assessment of the assessment" in ERA.

Main Results:

• Ecological risk assessment (ERA) is widely adopted but rarely subjected to post-construction performance reviews.
• Post-construction environmental monitoring is common, but assessing the accuracy of the original ERA and its model is not.
• A lack of "assessment of the assessment" hinders learning and improvement in ERA.

Conclusions:

• The infrequent post-hoc evaluation of ecological risk assessment (ERA) performance limits scientific progress.
• Implementing "assessment of the assessment" is vital for enhancing the reliability and effectiveness of ERAs.
• Improved ERA performance evaluation will lead to better-informed decisions for technological and infrastructure development.