An Evaluation of Different Risk Ranking Systems for Contaminated Sites

Date
2014-01-27
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Abstract
Risk ranking systems for contaminated sites have been developed by different jurisdictions with similar purpose, but it is not clear whether they provide results that are comparable. The United States’ Preliminary Assessment (PA) system, Sweden’s Methods for Inventories of Contaminated Sites (MICS) and New Zealand’s Risk Screening System (RSS) methods are assessed in this thesis. These methods were compared with each other and with the Canada’s National Classification System for Contaminated Sites (NCSCS) as well as a preliminary quantitative risk assessment (PQRA) method. The objectives were to determine if all these systems can yield similar recommendations regarding further actions, and to assess if there are acceptable correlations between the different methods. The study concludes that the PA, MICS and NCSCS methods can achieve similar conclusions, although there is a certain degree of inconsistency that is present; the RSS system can distinguish the very high and very low risk sites and; acceptable correlations exists among the these methods except for between PA and PQRA.
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Keywords
Engineering--Environmental
Citation
Sha, H. (2014). An Evaluation of Different Risk Ranking Systems for Contaminated Sites (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24858