Environmental Assessment Techniques

Abstract

Environmental assessment techniques comprise a range of analytical and practical tools of varying level of complexity to assess, monitor, or interpret environmental changes: expert judgment, checklist matrices, environmental risk assessment, mapping and spatial analysis, impact prediction, impact evaluation, remote sensing, natural resource accounting, participatory techniques, and crowdsourcing. Such techniques may rely on a combination of judgment, observations, measurements and modeling, and may either be applied autonomously as a stand‐alone tool or embedded within an institutionalized process such as environmental impact assessment requiring a combination of techniques and prescribing certain procedures to be followed. The aim of environmental assessment is to understand better the consequences of environmental change for human societies and the impact of human interference on the quality of the environment. Environmental assessment techniques are typically geared toward informing governments to design regulations or projects and companies to monitor compliance with regulations.