Environmental Risk Assessment Of Strategic Decision-Making Process In Coastal Area

Environmental risk assessment is a process that evaluates risk on the environment caused by human activities and nature disasters in order to formulate precaution and interrelated risk management measures to reduce and mitigate risk and its impact to achieve in acceptable level. In China or international, there is no related application of environmental risk assessment in strategic decision-making processes and no systematic research on the approaches and methods of environmental risk assessment aiming at supporting regional strategic decision-making processes. The coastal ecosystem is confronted with tremendous press from human activities. Therefore, environmental risk assessment that support coastal strategic decision-making processes would be in urgent to avoid the serious risk caused by the errors of decision-making processes.The research progress, development, approaches and methods of environmental risk assessment were summarized, and then an approach and methodology of environmental risk assessment for strategic decision-making process in coastal area was proposed in this dissertation.According to the features of coastal area and strategic decision-making processes, a new approach of environmental risk assessment based on Multi-Dimension Decision-Making (MDDM) approach was set up, which includes three stages:the environmental risk assessment before decision-making process to support the formulation of alternatives of strategic decision-making (Phase Ⅰ), the environmental risk assessment in decision-making process to support the determination of strategic decision-making (Phase Ⅱ), and the environmental risk assessment after decision-making to service managerial decision-making process (Phase Ⅲ).The methodological system of environmental risk assessment for strategic decision-making processes in coastal area was established based on the features of coastal area, main types of environmental risk in coastal area and the approach including three phases mentioned above by comparing the advantages and disadvantages of current main methods in international. The methodology mainly includes:retrospective assessment and experts judgment used in Phase I, multi-dimension decision-making (MDDM) method and its model used in Phase II comparing with Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), and Probability statistic analysis, risk matrix and other suitable traditional methods used in Phase III.The MDDM and MCDA were used in the determination of decision-making processes in the case studies of principal coastal functional zoning in the coastal areas of Xiamen Bay and Luoyuan Bay. The comparison of two methods of environmental risk assessment, MDDM and MCDA, are summarized as following:In the view of application process, the differences between MDDM and MCDA were found that:(1) MCDA requires more strict and specified data, while MDDM collected all existing data for the assessment to ensure the integrity and objectivity information for decision-making process;(2) MCDA still exists some inherent problems in the selection of criteria or indexes, the determination of standard value of criteria and determination of weight;(3) The technological progress of MCDA is more clear than MDDM and less flexible, while MDDM is more convenient to operate than the MCDA in the comparison of alternative and determination of decision-making processes.The final assessment result of decision-making processes calculated by two methods are consistent relatively, but in the view of assessment result, the differences were still found that:(1) the results by MDDM have higher consistency with the result of public involvement and expert-judgment than MCDA. The result of MCDA in the assessment of petroleum industrial risk in Luoyuan Bay was different with that of public participation;(2) In the comparison of alternatives for decision-making processes, the results by MCDA did not show much differences between different alternatives, and less support for decision-making processes than MDDM.The approach and methodology of environmental risk assessment of strategic decision-making process in coastal area based on MDDM can combine environmental risk assessment into decision-making process, well support decision-making process, avoid environmental risk caused by the errors of strategic decision-making process in coastal area, and promote the sustainable development in coastal area.