ABSTRACT 



Marine pollution assessment will more effectively serve the needs of 

 environmental management decisions if the assessment and decision processes are 

 integrated through a single systems analytic approach. In such an approach the 

 alternatives for marine pollution management and the values placed on potential 

 outcomes by the decisionmaker (or by the public affected by the decisions) 

 focus the information needs of the assessment. The assessment-decision analytic 

 process provides the basis for research-monitoring programs designed to validate 

 the predictions used in reaching the decisions. Iterative application of this 

 integrated assessment approach will lead to successive refinements in both 

 environmental understanding and the effectiveness of environmental policy, 

 especially if the analyses are carefully and objectively documented at each 

 step. 



The modeling needs for this integrated process encompass the areas of 

 deterministic and simulative models of environmental processes and effects, 

 probabilistic or risk assessment models, and models for decision analysis, 

 including models of value or utility and models for time preference and risk 

 aversion. These needs are discussed briefly, and a generic set of information 

 requirements is presented for major marine pollution issues. This set of needs 

 requires the formulation, validation, and documentation of predictive modeling 

 techniques, which should be iteratively applied and refined in a management 

 decision context to be most effective. 



INTRODUCTION 



To identify the types of modeling efforts needed for marine pollution 

 assessment, or more generally for environmental assessment, first requires an 

 understanding of just what is meant by environmental assessment. Why do we do 

 environmental impact assessment or marine pollution assessment? 



Environmental impact assessment has been defined as "an activity designed 

 to identify, predict, interpret and communicate information about the impact on 

 man's health and well-being, of proposed human actions" (Munn 1975). By way of 

 contrast, Holling (1978) has urged that the environmental assessment concept 

 and practice be incorporated into an overall process of adaptive environmental 

 management and policy design, in which environmental, economic, and social 

 understanding are integrated and applied at the beginning of the policy design 

 process, and that understanding is systematically improved both as part of the 

 design process and after implementation of the policy. Although these statements 

 carry strong implications of environmental assessment for decisionmaking, the 

 interface between assessment and decisions is poorly defined and frequently 

 ineffective (Holling 1978, Frenkiel and Goodall 1978). 



Environmental impact assessment is frequently practiced in a strongly 

 reactive mode of operation, in response either to perceived or suspected 

 environmental degradation, or to planned human activities or developments with 

 environmental implications. Neither of these reactive approaches is closely 

 coupled to the decision or planning process that led to or motivated the 

 assessment. 



