Cefic-LRI 12th Annual Workshop 2010 - Reduction of Uncertainty Enabling Decision Making

17 and 18 November 2010 Radisson Blu Royal Hotel, Brussels

Qualitative uncertainty within risk and exposure

assessments by using TUA
Alexandre Zenié1, Vittorio Reina2 and Athanasios Arvanitis3
1Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, Ispra (VA) ITALY – Email: alexandre.zenie@jrc.ec.europa.eu
2Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, Ispra (VA) ITALY – Email: vittorio.reina@ec.europa.eu
3Joint Research Centre of the European Commission Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, Ispra (VA) ITALY – Email: athanasios.arvanitis@jrc.ec.europa.eu

START Specifying result(s)

Identifying uncertainty sources

step 1

The characterisation of uncertainty within risk and

exposure assessments includes either qualitative or Characterising qualitative uncertainty
quantitative evaluations, or a combination of both. The
approach can also be tiered; i.e., the analysis can begin Assessing the magnitude Assessing the Assessing the
with a simple qualitative uncertainty characterisation of the influence of the knowledge base subjectivity of choices of
source on the result(s) of the source the source
then progress to a complex probabilistic analysis. The
decision regarding the type of uncertainty
characterisation to perform is also informed by the step 2

intended scope of the assessment, whether the

Reporting the qualitative uncertainty characterisation
selected analysis will provide additional information to
step 3
the overall decision regarding health protection, whether
sufficient data is available to conduct a complex END Reviewing

quantitative analysis, and if time and resources are

available for higher tier characterisations. Figure 2: Characterizing qualitative uncertainty

The primary purpose of the qualitative uncertainty

characterisation is to identify and compare the relative
impacts that important sources of uncertainty may have
on the final result(s) of the risk and exposure
assessments (Figure 1). This approach is justified
knowing that qualitative evaluation is the common
denominator for all sources of uncertainty given the
limited data available to inform probabilistic analysis,
and time and resource constraints.

JRC developed the TUA repository of uncertainty

analysis on the basis of WHO 2008 recommendations
of three dimensions characterisation of qualitative
uncertainty and COT 2007 guidance. It allows sources
of uncertainty to be specified and then scored according
to three different dimensions of qualitative uncertainty
characterisation (Figure 2).

Purpose Scenario Exposure Exposure Exposure

setting model(s) parameter(s) result(s)

Source(s) Geographical Concept Chemical

Figure 3: TUA qualitative uncertainty visualization layout.
applicability Example extracted from U.S. EPA 2009 SO2 REA
Agent(s) Algorithm Non-chemical
Exposure route(s)
Target(s)

Microenvironment Pathway(s)
TUA is freely accessible and it is now used within the
European HEIMTSA integrated project.
Figure 1: Identification of uncertainty sources
nities,, 2007

Contact
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Comm 2

Dr. Alexandre Zenié

nC
E opean

Tel. +39 0332 785285 • Fax +39 0332 789453

© Europ

E-mail: alexandre.zenie@jrc.ec.europa.eu