Journal
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 408, Issue 18, Pages 3899-3907Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2009.10.045
Keywords
Environmental risk assessment; Risk map; Risk communication; Environmental pollution; Geographic information systems
Categories
Funding
- European Union [003956]
- Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Food Quality (LNV)
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Risk maps help risk analysts and scientists to explore the spatial nature of the effects of environmental stressors such as pollutants. The development of Geographic Information Systems over the past few decades has greatly improved spatial representation and analysis of environmental information and data. Maps also constitute a powerful tool to communicate the outcome of complex environmental risk assessment to stakeholders such as the general public and policy makers. With appropriate cartography one can improve communication and thus bridge the gap between experts and users. Appropriate risk communication is pivotal to risk management, decision making and implementation and may prevent unnecessary concern about environmental pollutants. However, at present few risk maps are specifically tailored to meet the demands of such defined uses. This paper presents an overview of the most important types of risk maps that can be distinguished using examples from the scientific literature: contamination maps, exposure maps, hazard maps, vulnerability maps and 'true' risk maps. It also discusses, in a general way, the most important issues that need to be addressed when making risk maps for communication purposes: risk perception, target audience, scale and spatial aggregation and visualisation such as use of colours and symbols. Finally, some general rules of thumb are given for making environmental risk maps for communication purposes. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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