ISER 2012 Working Paper No. 1

Large resource development projects take years to plan. During that planning time, the public frequently debates the potential benefits and risks of a project, but with incomplete information. In these debates, some people might assert that a project would have great benefits, while others might assert that it would certainly harm the environment. At the same time, the developer will be assessing different designs, before finally submitting one to the government permitting agencies for evaluation and public scrutiny. For large mines in Alaska, the government permitting process takes years, and often includes an ecological risk assessment. This assessment is a data-intensive, scientific evaluation of the project’s potential ecological risks, based on the specific details of the project. Recently, some organizations have tried to bring scientific rigor to the pre-design public discussions, especially for mining projects, through a pre-design risk ecological risk assessment. This is a scientific assessment of the environmental risks a project might pose, before the details of project design, risk-prevention, and risk-mitigation measures are known. It is important to know whether pre-design risk assessment is a viable method for drawing conclusions about risks of projects. If valid risk predictions can be made at that stage, then people or governments would not have to wait for either a design or for the detailed evaluation that is done during the permitting process. Such an approach could be used to short cut permitting. It could affect project financing; it could affect the schedule, priority, or even the resources that governments put toward evaluating a project. But perhaps most important: in an age where public perceptions are an important influence on a project’s viability and government permitting decisions, a realistic risk assessment can be used to focus public attention on the facts. But if the methodology is flawed and results in poor quality information and unsupportable conclusions, then a pre-design risk assessment could unjustifiably either inflame or calm the public, depending on what it predicts.Executive Summary / Section 1. Introduction / Section 2. Overview of Ecological Risk / Section 3. Ecological Risk Assessment Methodology / Section 4. Examples of Post-Design Ecological Risk Assessments / Section 5. Pre-Design Ecological Risk Assessment: Risks of Large Scale Mining in the Bristol Bay Watershed / Section 6. Conclusion / Bibliograph

Exploring the Usability of Municipal Web Sites: A Comparison Based on Expert Evaluation Results from Four Case Studies

The usability of public administration web sites is a key quality attribute for the successful implementation of the Information Society. Formative usability evaluation aims at finding and reporting usability problems as early as possible in the development process. The objective of this paper is to present and comparatively analyze the results of an expert usability evaluation of 4 municipality web sites. In order to document usability problems an extended set of heuristics was used that is based on two sources: usability heuristics and ergonomic criteria. The explanatory power of heuristics was supplemented with a set of usability guidelines. The evaluation results revealed that a set of specific tasks with clearly defined goals helps to identify many severe usability problems that occur frequently in the municipality web sites. A typical issue for this category of web sites is the lack of information support for the user.Formative Usability Evaluation, User Testing, Expert Evaluation, Heuristic Evaluation, Ergonomic Criteria, Usability Problem, Municipal Web Sites

Federal Regulation of Pesticide Residues: A Brief History and Analysis

In the United States today, there are over 900 pesticides in use1 and over 400 are approved for use in food production, whether used as part of the growing process or in post-harvest handling. Although the history of pesticide use in food crops goes back centuries, the post-war period has seen an enormous growth in the varieties and amounts of pesticides used in our food system. As our reliance on pesticides has grown, pesticides have become a divisive issue. Pesticide advocates view them as essential to a secure and reliable food supply needed to feed a growing world population. Detractors, however, point out the public health risks—both known and not yet fully understood—that widespread pesticide use may entail. Meanwhile, consumer demand for products grown without the use of pesticides is increasing, while at the very same moment farmers are applying more and different pesticides to combat pesticide-resistant “superweeds.” These tensions are playing out both globally and locally in a variety of arenas, from debates over pesticide bans within international organizations and national governments, to the litigation of personal injury claims in American courts

After Heparin: Protecting Consumers From the Risks of Substandard and Counterfeit Drugs

Based on case studies, examines globalization and quality management trends in pharmaceutical manufacturing, barriers to Federal Drug Administration oversight, and the security of pharmaceutical distribution. Makes policy recommendations to ensure safety

Two Approaches to Imputation and Adjustment of Air Quality Data from a Composite Monitoring Network

An analysis of air quality data is provided for the municipal area of Taranto characterized by high environmental risks, due to the massive presence of industrial sites with elevated environmental impact activities. The present study is focused on particulate matter as measured by PM10 concentrations. Preliminary analysis involved addressing several data problems, mainly: (i) an imputation techniques were considered to cope with the large number of missing data, due to both different working periods for groups of monitoring stations and occasional malfunction of PM10 sensors; (ii) due to the use of different validation techniques for each of the three monitoring networks, a calibration procedure was devised to allow for data comparability. Missing data imputation and calibration were addressed by three alternative procedures sharing a leave-one-out type mechanism and based on {\it ad hoc} exploratory tools and on the recursive Bayesian estimation and prediction of spatial linear mixed effects models. The three procedures are introduced by motivating issues and compared in terms of performance