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Table 8 Prototype Code of Practice and guidance for volcanic hazard assessments

From: Hazard communication by volcanologists: part 2 - quality standards for volcanic hazard assessments

Prototype Code of Practice and guidance for volcanic hazard assessments

 This code:

  • contains practical advice on how to provide effective outcome-focused hazard assessments;

  • is not intended to be either prescriptive or comprehensive; and deliberately avoids do’s and don’ts

  • does not purport to have legal status but aims to assist relevant risk governance stakeholders to identify, and comply with, their legal duties; and

  • can also be used as a simple, short, targeted checklist to encourage, and facilitate, deliberation between risk governance stakeholders, so that a wide range of management drivers are openly identified and discussed. These drivers may be geological, geographical, technical, historical, governmental (at multiple levels), cultural, spiritual, linguistic, legal, political, economic, or time/resource related.

Column 1 contains a code of general principles of acceptable practice that are supplemented and supported by evidence-based guidance in column 2.

General principles

Guidance

Sources

Hazard assessments

Unless alternative principles are discussed and agreed with users in advance, hazard assessments shall be:

 Open and transparent

Conducted in a manner that it is open, iterative, inclusive and understandable and thereby capable of inspiring trust in and support from end-users.

US/NRC 1996; Marzocchi et al. 2012; Hill et al. 2013; Hincks et al. 2014; OECD 2015.

 Systematic, rational and capable of independent review/audit

Ensuring suitable and sufficient planned assessment of all available evidence and significant issues and adequate consideration of any matter arising from legitimate and responsible scientific disagreement.

Scientific disagreement and resulting communication difficulties were evident during the volcanic incidents in Guadeloupe (1976) and St Vincent (1979).

Fiske 1984; Driedger et al. 2008, 505; Frenzen and Matarrese 2008). See also Funtowicz and Ravetz 1992; Laudan 1996; Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof 1999; Lupton 1999; Jasanoff 2002; Merz and Thieken 2005; Renn 2008; Mellor 2008; Johnson and Jeunemaitre 2011; Spieghalter and Reisch 2011; Aspinall 2012; Marzocchi et al. 2012; Aspinall and Cooke 2013; Rougier 2013; Rougier and Beven 2013; Hicks et al. 2013; Cornell and Jackson 2013; Freer et al. 2013; Beven et al. 2015

 Based on relevant evidence and experience and reflect structured deliberation by experts with an appropriate range of different and complementary geo-scientific skills

A Bayesian evidentiary analysis approach may provide a way to pool imprecise judgements in the light of multiple streams of inexact data and indistinct observations. It may also provide an impartial quantitative basis for incorporating imperfect volcanological insights into hazard assessment in a coherent manner despite deterministic insufficiency.

Stern and Fineberg 1996; Renn 2008; Aspinall 2012;

 Independent

Free from duress and uninfluenced by the pressures of other interested parties such as, but not limited to, risk decision makers, local advisers or members of the public (social pressure), the media and/or possible or actual litigation.

Voight 1998.

 Neutral

Avoiding advocating, encouraging or refuting the point of view of an interested party or a particular risk management response, avoiding value-laden statements and maintaining political neutrality and attempting to neutralise any unintended negative bias.

Kahneman and Tversky 1979; Stern and Fineberg 1996; Newhall and Punongbayan 1996; Punongbayan et al. 1996; Marzocchi et al. 2012.

 Unbiased

Dispassionately ignoring all “non-hazard” implications (i.e. risk assessment and management issues) that may be contingent upon the temporal, spatial and physical parameters of the hazard scenarios – i.e. framed “irrespective of the consequences of the threatening event”

Barberi and Carapezza 1996; Punongbayan et al. 1996.

 Value-free

Unaffected by societal context e.g. knowledge of societal exposures and vulnerabilities.

Barberi and Carapezza 1996; Punongbayan et al. 1996.

 Objective

No hazard assessment can be truly objective, but the known sources of subjectivity can be stated so that they are explicit and can be challenged e.g. adopted assumptions, definitions, models, methods, thresholds, parameters, monitoring choices, etc.

Stern and Fineberg 1996; Freudenburg 1988; Bohnenblust and Slovic 1998, 159; Horlick-Jones 1998; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1990; Wynne 1992; IRGC 2005; Renn 2008; Aspinall 2012; Marzocchi and Bebbington 2012; Marzocchi et al. 2012; Leonard et al. 2014; Beven et al. 2015.

 Balanced

Reflecting the inherent complexities of volcanic hazards, what is known/unknown, certain/uncertain and all material matters (such the absence of available data) including those matters that may detract from the final advice – to reflect the full range of opinions and competing contrary views and never cherry-picking.

Newhall and Punongbayan 1996; Department of Farming and Rural Affairs DEFRA - The Central Science Laboratory 2007; Marzocchi and Bebbington 2012; Stein and Geller 2012; Rougier and Beven 2013, Stein and Friedrich 2014; Beven et al. 2015; Marti 2015.

 In compliance with good practice and all relevant quality standards.

Identify the current dynamic standards of monitoring, analysis and communication that a reasonably competent hazard assessment would reach having complied with all applicable standards.

A hazard assessment should retain those practice values touching probity and quality associated with traditional scientific methodologies.

 

 As far as reasonably practicable, hazard assessments shall be suitable for the purposes for which they are provided.

A hazard assessment is suitable if it satisfies the reasonable needs of its foreseeable users.

Stern and Fineberg 1996; McGuire et al. 2009.

Hazard communications

Unless alternative principles are discussed and agreed with users in advance, as far as reasonably practicable hazard communications shall be:

 Candid and truthful even if worrisome

 

Chakraborty 2011

 Material

A hazard assessment should be relevant to end-users’ demands for scientific input, and sensitive to competing demands relating to the scope, precision and timing of that input.

 

 Comprehensible

Communicated clearly: (1) using words, numbers, terms and graphics that are readily understandable to end-users; (2) in a user-friendly format; and (3) accommodating the known strengths and weaknesses of end-user thought processes to ensure that users can easily extract meaning.

Sorensen and Mileti 1987; Punongbayan et al. 1996; Nature 1997; Newhall et al. 1999; Barclay et al. 2008; Chakraborty 2011; Alemanno 2011; Doyle et al. 2014.

 Timely

 

Voight 1996; Chakraborty 2011

 Recorded in a permanent format

 

Hill et al. 2013; Aspinall and Cooke 2013.

 Easily accessible (if appropriate, delivered in a variety of formats).

  

 Issued from one authorised authoritative source.

 

Fiske 1984; Newhall and Punongbayan 1996; Driedger et al. 2008; Frenzen and Matarrese 2008; OECD 2015.

Hazard assessors

Hazard assessors shall:

 Use their best endeavours to command the trust and confidence of the users of hazard assessments; and

To nurture the willingness of end-users to receive and trust scientific advice and make informed decisions based upon the quality of existing relationships, hazard assessors should ensure that: (1) they act always with honesty, integrity, independence and impartiality; and (2) their actions are candid, competent, consistent, open and accountable.

 

 Only offer hazard assessments that they are competent, and have the capacity and resources, to provide.

An increasingly wide range of services is sought from volcanologists and bare characterisations of the temporal, spatial and physical parameters of volcanic hazard scenarios (e.g. lahar hazard zone maps) are often accompanied by advice that sometimes includes advice about hazard and risk mitigation issues (e.g. volcano-wide alert levels).

Volcanologists are exposed to new managerial hazards, and vulnerable to managerial risks, when they stray, for whatever reason, from their traditional roles and practices (such as providing lahar hazard zone maps) and to provide risk-related advice (such as risk alert levels based upon lahar hazard zones). The ‘exposure’ comes from volcanologists extending their scientific advisory role; the ‘vulnerability’ is derived from any lack of competencies, time or resources to fulfil those extended roles.

A competent hazard assessor is one who has sufficient training, expertise, experience, practical and thinking skills, and knowledge to undertake all their roles to a recognised standard. The level of competence required will depend upon many issues including, but not limited to, the nature and complexity of the risk-mitigation decisions to be made, the capacity and competence of the decision makers, and the time and resources available.

Bretton et al. 2015; OECD 2015; Bretton and Aspinall 2017.