Project Idris — Ecological Risk Assessment — Regional Approaches

Ecological risk assessment (EcoRA) is a rapidly evolving discipline that is quickly being incorporated into the daily routines of industry and government. The conceptual design is based on the development of expert system (SETAC Workshop, Breckenridge, Co, 1987) and decision-support system (ERADSS - Pelston Workshop, Mi, 1994). Ecological risk assessment frameworks have recently been completed or are under development in numerous countries of Europe, the US, and Canada. Presently, many specific approaches and models exist in numerous sub-disciplines of EcoRA, such as chemical-property and fate estimation, toxicity, biological uptake, and population effects with limited co-ordination across these sub-disciplines. The ecological risk assessment framework shows’ the trends of global harmonization of EcoRA and development of common methods, data and criteria and pooled resources to obtain more cost-effective, consistent, and flexible systems with reduced duplication of effort and incompatibilities.