Literature review of risk assessment and decision making frameworks

The research programme “He Tangata, He Taiao, He Ōhanga (Strategic Outcome 3, New Zealand’s Biological Heritage National Science Challenge) aims to incorporate information from a holistic set of values into a biosecurity risk assessment framework.

This literature review is part of the first stage of that research programme, aiming to describe what is already available to support risk assessment and decision making in the biosecurity system.

Searches were conducted for term sets such as “biosecurity decision framework”, “biosecurity risk assessment framework” and “biosecurity risk analysis framework”.

10 frameworks related to biosecurity decision making were found. These frameworks are described in terms of the components that they contained and how they addressed the different values (for example economic or social values).

More risk assessment frameworks were found than could be reviewed in the available time. 23 frameworks were described in terms of their scope and how they addressed the different values.

Many published frameworks were developed for specific purposes and cannot be adopted for other purposes without modification.

While a number of frameworks mentioned a holistic set of values, very few addressed those values in detail. One framework contained a checklist for considering social and economic values. One framework contained descriptors for describing levels of impact for invasive species on human well-being.

The design of frameworks needs to address more than just developing tools. The design also needs to consider those who will directly use the framework (for example, risk assessors), and those who will use the results of that framework (for example, decision makers who make decisions based on risk assessment).