Management practices decision point

In practical risk management, the evaluation of options is done in close cooperation between experts and decision makers. As pointed out later, this is the step in which direct stakeholder involvement and public participation is particularly important and is therefore best assured by making use of a variety of methods (Rowe and Frewer 2000 OECD 2002 Renn 2008). 

To most practitioners who work in the day to day issues of environmental control these uncertainties are irrelevant. The decision on what constitutes an acceptable level of control for a particular substance or agent has already been made by national or international bodies. The daily task in practice is to manage the consequences. However, for some areas of activity the fact of data uncertainty is of very real concern. In the chemical business, for example, researchers develop new chemicals which have to be tested to demonstrate the point at which toxic effects occiu (most chemicals are toxic at some dose rate). Once a toxic effect is observed the precautionary principle can be applied so that environmental concentrations are 10 times to 100 times below the known effect level. This becomes the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC). The more toxic a chemical appears, the more sensitive the species upon which the tests are performed before the precautionary principle is applied. The Notification of New Substances Regulations, dealt with in another chapter, enshrines this process in law. 

Finally, according to Van der Roest, the project manager at the engineering firm DHV, the decision to opt for the bubble column reactor was made by DHV and DHV had to convince Van Loosdrecht to abandon the airlift reactor, who did so only reluctantly. From the point of view of Van der Roest, if it had not been for DHV to abandon the airlift reactor the aerobic GSBRs would never have come to the commercial market. According to Van der Roest, he had to challenge the scientists to adapt the process for practical purposes. He had to make the scientists aware that on real scale the oxygen concentration would be lower than in the laboratory because of restrictions on pump capacity. From the perspective of the Kluyver Lab it was... 

Information distortion can be dampened by practices that assign replenishment responsibility across the supply chain to a single entity. Replenishment decisions made by a single entity ensure visibility and a common forecast that drives orders across the supply chain. Two common industry practices that assign a single point of responsibility are continuous replenishment programs and vendor-managed inventories. 

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