A Stakeholder’s Perspective on Contaminated Land Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 1061

to decision making whereby corrective action is tailored to site-specific conditions.
This leads to cost-effective solutions that are appropriate to treat the actual risks
posed by contamination.
Today Risk Based Land Management (RBLM) is considered the best available
strategy for dealing with the problems posed by contaminated sites by most EU
Member States (Carlon and Swartjes 2007 ) and many other developed countries
in the world. Consequently, many countries have adopted the risk-based principle
in their environmental policy on contaminated land, although the harmonisation of
both human and ecological Risk Assessment methodologies across Europe is still
an issue at hand (Carlon and Swartjes 2007 ).
Efficient site characterisation and management of the data associated with it are
recurring topics within NICOLE. There is a balance between necessary site charac-
terisation costs to provide sufficient knowledge for risk based decision making, and
excessive site characterisation that is carried out purely for compliance purposes
without any real improvement in decision-making. This excessive cost produces
information of low value, and is a misuse of resources which could be better directed
elsewhere in site management. Figure 24.1 illustrates this idea that there is an opti-
mum level of site characterisation effort: too little and overall site management costs
are driven higher - for example because incorrect decisions are made; too much and
the additional value of information provided does not improve the site management
and simply adds cost to the project. Figure 24.1 also introduces the idea that this
cost curve is affected by other factors. A decision making process that is perception-
driven as opposed to being knowledge-driven will tend to lead to a more expensive

Site Management Total
Cost

Criteria led approach

Perception based approach

Knowledge based approach

Risk based approach

Site Characterisation Cost

Fig. 24.1 Site characterisation cost curves - conceptual diagram