Environmental Management: Principles and practice

Technology assessment, hazard, risk and impact assessment
Technology assessment (technical evaluation) seeks to establish whether equipment
and techniques work. This can include assessment of use impacts to inform decision-
making and clarify problems and opportunities (Impact Assessment Bulletin vol. 53,
special issue, 1987). Technology assessment follows a broadly parallel path to EIA,
and may involve evaluation of indirect and cumulative impacts (Kates, 1978; Kates
and Hohenemser, 1982). It involves systematic study of the effects on environment
and society that occur when a technology is introduced, extended or modified.
Technology assessment was widespread in the USA by 1967, so pre-dates
EIA. In 1973 the US Congress created the Office of Technology Assessment to
promote and oversee it. An International Society for Technology Assessment operated
from the USA in the mid-1970s, developing into the International Association for
Impact Assessment (IAIA), a body which promotes EIA, SIA, technology assessment,
hazard assessment, risk assessment and related activities. The National Science
Foundation in the USA also supports technology assessment, and Europe, Japan,
Canada and Austria had established bodies to promote the field by the late 1980s. As

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well as having a warning function, technology assessment can, like EIA, aid decision
making and planning in other ways. It may be initiated by government, international
bodies, NGOs or the industries or agencies which plan to innovate.
Technology impacts can be a function of: technology failure; operator failure;
poor maintenance; poor design; faulty installation; terrorism; natural or human
accident; adaptations prompted by the innovation. Not surprisingly, assessment
practitioners are often engineers, so socioeconomic issues may not be well covered.
The tendency has been to concentrate on morbidity and mortality—but there is now
increasing interest in civil liberties and social aspects of technology innovation.
Technology assessment has an important part to play in the quest for sustainable
development, identifying threats and promising development paths. (Social impacts
of technology innovations are discussed in chapter 8 —e.g. the effects of TV
broadcasting innovations.)
Technology risk may be posed by a known potentially dangerous activity like
petrochemical processing or by new, untested technology, chemicals, biotechnology
and pharmaceuticals (Ricci, 1981:101). Technological innovation may relate to any
aspect of life: attempts to improve agriculture, telecommunications, industry,
transport, etc. Industrial hazard and risk assessment examines mainly established
manufacturing practices, is less likely to deal with unknowns arising from technical
innovation than technology assessment proper. There is increasing interest in using
technology assessment to ‘tune’ new technology, and it is being applied to
biotechnology, including genetic engineering. Europe is applying it to long-term
strategic policy making and as a means of early warning.
Hazard and risk assessment increasingly demand international co-operation as
global change and transboundary impacts from technology also grow because there
is a tendency for technological hazard to be ‘exported’ to countries where laws,
monitoring and enforcement may be less stringent and planners and regulators less
well informed. Large sums of money may be involved in such exporting, making
objective assessment a challenge.