A decision support system for assessing and managing environment risk cross borders

Risk assessment and management, are increasingly established as key procedures in dealing with the range of environmental issues at different scales and of different nature. Although at the EU and international policy level requirements for the use of risk assessment and management are being established through emerging policy and legislation, this demand has not been followed with common guidance on how to do so. This has proven to hinder the effective adoption of such processes, and posed a barrier more so in its implementation for large transboundary issues. In this paper is presented a Decision Support System (DSS) designed to provide a common framework and procedure for environmental risk assessment and management. The DSS is web-based and was developed to enable the formalized and more systematic utilization of risk assessment and management procedures in environmental decision making processes, in particular for users such as public authority officials charged with the responsibility of implementing risk management legal and policy obligations, yet which have limited know how in the field of risk. The DSS presented herein enables environmental administrators and decision makers to undertake generic risk assessment and management identifying areas where detailed risk assessment is required, proposing as well as appropriate risk management options. The web DSS was developed and piloted as part of the STRiM project funded by the European Union. Herein are shown results from the web application which has been trailed successfully in four pilot trials addressing risks of forest damage from storms, water pollution from olive mill waste discharges, wetland loss from water abstraction, and damage from flooding.