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Assessment Questions

Resource managers and other decision-makers are frequently required to make decisions about priorities. A common question is "Given limited resources, what environmental problems and what geographic areas are most in need of attention?" Answering this difficult question requires exploration of a series of focused assessment questions before actions are taken to protect valued resources, human health, or quality of life. These questions might focus on information such as:

  • an evaluation of current overall conditions
  • risk of future environmental degradation
  • sustainability of the system
  • current and future value to society
  • feasibility of taking some action

All of these assessment questions can be addressed to some degree using available data and information. Each requires a different integration method (see the tutorial for more information on this), and each receives a different answer, or in the case of a visual representation, a different map. Types of assessment questions that can be addressed by ReVA approaches and the EDT include:

  1. What is the overall condition of the region?
  2. What is the relative environmental condition given all variables or a subset (e.g. those related to water quality)?
  3. Where are the strategic planning or restoration priorities for a region?
  4. What are the current most pressing environmental risks for a region? Where are these risks?
  5. What is likely to be the greatest risk in the future? Where is this risk?
  6. Where is there greatest risk of major change?

Different assessment questions require different types of variable data and metrics and possibly different analysis or integration methods. The selection of variables and methods is driven by the particular issues of concern and the questions a user brings to the vulnerability assessment. Further information on selecting data and analysis methods is provided in the tutorial and in the analytical sections of the tool.

To help you understand how the ReVA EDT can assist in answering these questions, the next few pages show examples of the types of information that the web tool can provide.

 
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