Integration of environmental assessment indicators into site assessment procedures

The amount of information that can be gathered for contaminated site assessment is often limited by the cost of making measurements. Effective decisions on site management rely heavily on this information. Lower cost measurements or more effective use of the diverse information already available should increase the quality of these decisions, provided that final data quality is not compromised. However, fundamental problems can arise from interpreting the reliability, uncertainty and significance of the raw measurements or other indicators. Such problems are paralleled in Environmental Impact Assessment and Life Cycle Analysis methodologies. Drawing on the work undertaken within these disciplines may help clarify the solution for site assessment. Scoring, ranking and valuation techniques have been used successfully in providing decision support for the design of sampling strategies for contaminated sites through maximizing the use of desk study data and site reconnaissance observations.