Scientific and engineering improvement of environmental risk management - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 382

Figure 11.1 Tools in environmental management to be developed (ERA: environmental risk assessment,
SEA: strategic environmental assessment, LCA: life cycle assessment, MCA: multi-criteria
analysis, DST: decision-support tool).

2 TECHNOLOGICAL EFFICIENCY OF ENVIRONMENTAL
RISK MANAGEMENT

Technologies available today are not suitable for solving environmental problems
because the cost involved burdens the economy. Technological efficiency is unable
to fulfill environmental and human health requirements. Innovation provides new
tools which help to achieve environmental goals at low cost and may ensure green
growth . This is why technological development, creation of know-hows and the legal
and economic support of innovation, e.g., by environmental taxation and pricing and
by subsidizing innovation are so important.
Efficiency of environmental management and its components such as regulation,
monitoring, site assessment, risk assessment and remediation can be improved by
enhancing the individual compartments of the management system, marked with a red
star in Figure 11.1.
Some possibilities to improve the technological components of environmental
management are listed in the following:

- Using better data acquisition methods, innovative sampling and assessment;

- More comprehensive evaluation and interpretation methods, including

forecasting;