Understanding Risk Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (1996) / Chapter Skim
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5 INTEGRATING ANALYSIS AND DELIBERATION
5 INTEGRATING ANALYSIS AND DELIBERATION
Pages 118-132
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From page 118... ...
Both are also ways of informing, constructing, and testing judgments about the validity of evidence and the appropriateness of decisions not only substantive ones, but also the many procedural and methodological ones that lead to effective risk characterization. Thus, both analysis and deliberation are useful in every step leading to risk characterization, and participants in risk decisions are likely to be better informed if the two processes are combined in appropriate ways.
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From page 119... ...
One important factor is whether particular parties are likely to be affected by a decision: the organization responsible for the risk characterization should consider including potentially affected parties even if they do not yet realize they may be affected. Another factor may be the level of trust the parties have in the commitment and ability of the technical experts and the decision-making organizations to protect them.
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From page 120... ...
uses different procedures at different steps, with organized interests taking the lead in the first step, technical experts in the second, and randomly selected citizens in the third. Although neither of these approaches has been used often enough to recommend it confidently for adoption, each may nevertheless be useful as a source of ideas for officials charged with organizing risk characterization efforts.
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From page 121... ...
This led to proposals to investigate enhancing the existing Surface Water Treatment Rule as a means of controlling disinfectant by-product precursors. The negotiating committee realized that more data and analysis might help it decide whether a reformulation of the problem could yield more acceptable and protective solutions.
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From page 122... ...
Obtaining agreement on a decision process at the outset from those who will be affected by the decision can significantly affect the acceptability of the outcome (Crowfoot and Wollendeck, 19901. Analysis and deliberation can complement each other in achieving two of the main objectives of process design: determining who should be involved in risk characterization and planning for the appropriate use of analytical techniques.
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From page 123... ...
A deliberative tool such as a citizen advisory committee might be used to agree on answers to such questions and to select principles for choosing participants for each subsequent phase. A broadly based process that includes analytic specialists and others can improve planning for the appropriate use of analysis to support a risk characterization.
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From page 124... ...
SELECTION OF OPTIONS AND OUTCOMES The discussion of problem formulation has already suggested ways in which analysis and deliberation together can help in choosing which actions to consider. In the disinfectant by-products negotiation, defining the problem as a risk-risk tradeoff implied analyzing various limits on maximum contaminant levels, whereas defining the problem in terms of controlling disinfectant by-product precursors suggested different options, including watershed protection and filtration.
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From page 125... ...
Four subsequent phases of the process excluded sites on the basis of additional criteria that emerged from two related deliberations: one involved FPC staff; the other involved an environmental advisory group composed of community leaders in the search region, including leaders of environmental and business groups and past officials of local and state governments. These deliberations generated additional exclusionary criteria and assigned them weights.
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From page 126... ...
Broadly based deliberative processes can raise questions, suggest alternative ways to interpret or frame issues, generate hypotheses, or provide data as input to an analysis of a risk situation. For example, individuals with specialized knowledge about actual operations in organizations engaged in hazardous activities (e.g., nuclear power plant operators, air traffic controllers, coal miners)
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From page 127... ...
Broadly based, scientifically informed deliberations are also useful for considering the meaning of available information about a risk. In fact, such deliberations are often critical to achieving an understanding that will make a risk characterization credible to its various users and audiences.
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From page 128... ...
Project staff identify the experts by conducting interviews, reviewing the literatures, and taking suggestions from agency staff and interested and affected parties. The experts conduct their work using a face-to-face structured communication technique called a group Delphi, which iterates individual responses and group discussions in an effort to seek consensus and define disagreement (Webler et al., 1991~.
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From page 129... ...
Because of real-world deadlines for decisions, whether set by law, budgets, or competing work, it is the responsibility of the organization charged with preparing a risk characterization to determine the point of closure for each step of the analytic-deliberative process. The organization is also in the best position to create mechanisms to promote closure and to set and enforce criteria for closure.
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From page 130... ...
Another way to promote closure is to have the participants in a deliberation adopt a set of procedural rules that can be used in their discussions to reach closure even when substantial disagreements persist. For example, they may decide to follow parliamentary rules and resolve issues by majority vote after a discussion period.
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From page 131... ...
CONCLUSION This chapter and the two preceding ones have detailed an expanded view of the risk decision process that can be the basis for successful risk characterizations. Structuring an analytic-deliberative process for informing a risk decision is not a matter of formal blueprints or step-by-step directions: every step of the process, from identifying possible harm to deciding when to close the last part of an analysis or the last part of a deliberation, involves judgment.
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From page 132... ...
· Getting the right participation: The analytic-deliberative process has had sufficiently broad participation to ensure that the important, decision-relevant information enters the process, that the important perspectives are considered, and that the parties' legitimate concerns about inclusiveness and openness are met. · Getting the participation right: The analytic-deliberative process satisfies the decision makers and interested and affected parties that it is responsive to their needs that their information, viewpoints, and concerns have been adequately represented and taken into account; that they have been adequately consulted; and that their participation has been able to affect the way risk problems are defined and understood; · Developing an accurate, balanced, and informative synthesis: The risk characterization presents the state of knowledge, uncertainty, and disagreement about the risk situation to reflect the range of relevant knowledge and perspectives and satisfies the parties to a decision that they have been adequately informed within the limits of available knowledge.
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