Scientific and engineering improvement of environmental risk management - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 387

Figure 11.5 Pathway of innovation from the selection phase to placing on market.
and the necessary equipment and accessories, mass balance and flow rates and other
technological parameters and their effects on the outcome. After having a working
technology on a small scale (small and large laboratory size, pilot plant), the devel-
oper should go out to the field to demonstrate the applicability of the technology
on the site.
Carrying out field demonstrations requires a real case, an existing and ongoing
ERM case, an emission, and a contaminated site. Then the candidate technology should
be adapted and integrated into the risk management process. Demonstration is the key
element of the innovation chain, aiming at the validation of the technology and verifi-
cation of its expected technological, environmental, economic and social efficiencies.
After the demonstration, the results should be disseminated in scientific and engineer-
ing circles to all types of end users and decision makers as well as the general public.
This is a marketing and PR activity, which would require special tools, not only those
which are exercised for the products in general. Environmental technologies are not
simple products which have an exact place on the market and fulfill a very clearly
defined need of the consumers. They have to find their place in a highly science- and
technology-based decision-making process and in a complex management system. It
is important to fit them into the overall technological and cultural standard of liv-
ing. Soft environmental tools based on knowledge are more useful in technically less
developed regions. Nevertheless, environmental knowledge should also be strength-
ened in “high-tech'' societies to raise awareness and thus increase the marketability
of this knowledge. Vendors are forced to sell environmental biotechnology and eco-
engineering in bags and bottles, which is the “demotion'' of high-potential knowledge
to a low-efficiency product, the “super inoculant.''