What is Environmental Risk?
The Environmental Risk strategic research initiative is based on the collaboration of three research groups at The Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change (ENSPAC):
- Environmental Dynamics,
- Geosciences (former Quaternary Research Group)
- METRIK (Environment, Energy, Transport - Regulation, Innovation, and Climate Policy)
Environmental Risk is an ambitious interdisciplinary research effort which brings various natural science subjects together with social science studies within the broad field of environmental risk assessment and regulation.
Research in this interdisciplinary area includes a plurality of challenges that require scientific research to identify and assess the nature, likelihood and effects of environmental risk issues, but at the same time to understand and apply this information within an appropriate social science context (i.e. regulation, implementation, adaptation). For example, there are environmental risks associated with the uses of various types of chemical combinations in the natural environment, within the working environment and in connection with consumer goods which is in focus for the EU REACH regulation and is a risk assessment task with great challenges.
Natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, etc., on the other hand comprise other types of environmental risks that occur at larger temporal and spatial scales. Assessing and handling both types of environmental risk require the same type of interdisciplinary knowledge, which can be achieved through the application and interaction of biological, geological and physical geographical research and combined with knowledge from environmental regulation and planning in theory and in practice.
Overall themes within Environmental Risk
While the field of Environmental Risk is broad and diverse, the research efforts in this initiative generally fall into one or more of the following themes:
Water and the Environment
Eutrophication, contaminants, reestablishment of aquatic ecosystems, water planning and regulation, implementation of Water Framework Directive (WFD) or similar regulations, climate change adaptation.
Chemicals and the Environment
Chemical regulation, risk assessment of chemicals, fate and effects, cocktail effects, extrapolation from lab to ecosystem scale, chemical management.
Natural Hazards and the Environment
Volcanoes and society, environmental and societal impacts of natural hazards, climate history – insights into environmental risk.
Research efforts related to each of these themes is interdisciplinary in nature, but has the overall goal to scientifically investigate, assess and characterize the risk elements above and to recommend and develop regulations and other measures to reduce the likelihood and severity of their environmental impacts.