Hi Ramez. Academic literature is rich about EIA effectiveness. For instance, Morrison-Saunders' studies are mainly about it. Also Glasson's. Several authors advocate EIA's effectiveness as a matter of continuous monitoring (the highlighted big flaw of EIA). As more structured and well suited to prediction and action, more effective EIA is supposed to be. However, disasters (even though predictable to some extent) require inputs of risk assessment, so I think EIA alone is not enough to deal with disaster's demands for impact assessment. Indeed academic literature have some studies suggesting the integration between EIA framework and risk assessment frameworks, so my tip is to look at these studies. All the best.

"Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an important procedure to ensure that the likely effects of new development on the environment are fully understood and taken into account before the development is allowed to go ahead''. So it is a long term procedure and generally it is done in normal environment. If disaster occur in the period of EIA, then it is needed first to identify what the impact of disaster and thereafter Environmental Impact; so I think when disaster occur EIA alone is not enough to assess the impact.

EIAs take time. After a disaster speedy action is imparative and ther is no time to do an EIA. A quick risk assessment is all that is needed.

Hello! Perhaps the ProAct Network website might be of some interest to you:

Environmental Assessments and Environmental Action Plans – (ProAct Network, 2012)

http://www.proactnetwork.org/proactwebsite/environmental-assessments-and-environmental-action-plans

Assessing the situation before the disaster is very crucial....

An environmental impact assessment process will only develop the obvious risk scenarios that can be envisaged at the scale of impact driven by local climate/geology/sociology and known risks of the processes employed at the facility. It is imperative to continue the process of assessing the scenarios from within the facility, developing the knowledge base of the interaction between the facility and the environment. It is also important to bring fresh eyes into the arena. It may be the case that the consultants developing the EIA never get involved with assessing an operational facility and do not appreciate the intricacies of process control, groundwater, storms, earth tremors, migratory birds etc etc. The other issue to be aware of is beautiful documentation that means nothing. What is vital to risk mitigation are people who can recall when..."Oh yes, that happened ten years ago!"

I have a great photo of a house that was blown apart due to an abandoned gas well being under the floor, the realtor knew nothing of it but the locals did, nobody asked them!

EIA studies often take a lot of time because either the responsible government agency or the study preparers want them to. There is no inherent reason why the EIA process cannot be effectively used in disaster or other emergency situations. After all, officials still need to know how their responses to such situations could affect the human and natural environment, and they should be coordinating with all affected parties. In the USA, at least, the relevant federal regulations contain a provision for dealing with such situations through the existing NEPA process for EIA.

When the Mount St. Helens volcano erupted in the state of Washington in 1980, it caused major flooding, river sedimentation, and adverse effects on fish and wildlife as well as on human settlements. The US Army Corps of Engineers was the lead federal agency to respond. They invoked the "special arrangements provision of the CEQ's NEPA regulations, under which they were allowed to proceed immediately with certain river dredging and other emergency work while also conducting an accelerated EIA process. The Corps established an interagency working group, released a draft EIS for review and public comment in less than three weeks, and completed a final EIS in less than five weeks. All parties involved, including the Corps, considered this effort to be a success, in part because the process was familiar to those involved, and because it facilitated interagency coordination. I am familiar with this case because I was the CEQ official who approved the process that was used.

I often cite this example when I hear complaints about the time and cost that some claim is inherent in any EIA process. One key factor that made this case a success is that the Corps of Engineers had the internal professional capacity to do most of the EIA analysis itself. Other govenment agencies could learn from this example and improve their own capability to do EIA more quickly and at less cost than is often what happens when they simply contract out the work without setting strict standards for performance or providing close oversight of their outside contractors.

Robert B Smythe, Potomac Resource Consultants, Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA

I don't believe a EIA would be useful in its current form during a disaster, it is to time consuming and needs a lot of expertise to carry out. But i do think a rapid version could be developed to access key areas water quality, waste water treatment, water supply, hazardous materials etc. A system would have to be developed for the assessment of these key factors and the use of non specialised personal to carry out the work. The finding from a rapid assessment could be fed into disaster assessment software or even Google earth to better help inform the public.

I believe that there would be a place of a shortened version of an EIA in a disaster but in its current form i believe an EIA would just get in the way.

I do not think that EIA is the appropriate tool for disasters. I think that ERA (Environmental Risk Assessment) needs to be used

To my understanding the EIA is a process applied to predict the impacts of proposed actions or development where this is not applicable to the disasters but we can say the EIA could be used for analyzing after disaster alternatives I.e. remediation options

The difference lies in the probability scope of risk assessment.

EIA can deal with potential disaster events before they happen, e.g. in earthquake prone areas. This means they can prescribe potential action in case a certain event happens. When a disaster has struck, 'rapid EIAs' are frequently applied, e.g. in order to avoid repeating those 'mistakes' that may have made the effects of the event causing the disaster worse.

Thanks Thomas, any practical examples or case histories in this concern?

Is this related to 'events analysis'?. I am pretty much new to this topic and am interested as to major disaster scenarios prediction.

Ramez,

there's a range of documents available; see e.g.: http://green-recovery.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Module-3-Content-Paper.pdf. There's a forthcoming paper by myself and Tom Gore in Environment and Planning C on 'Environmental impact assessment: a tool for post disaster risk reduction in developing countries? Learning from Aceh'. I'll inform you when this comes out. - And finally, as you're in Tokyo, there's going to be a joint Japan-UK workshop on 'Policy Integration between Environmental Assessment and Disaster Management' at Chiba University between 30 November-2 December. I can also send a summary of the results afterwards.

Thank you for the feedback. By the way, I live in Melbourne. Greatly appreciate your support.

thank you Thomas for your valuable participation.

In my sense EIA is not a tool to calculate the impacts after effect.it is basically tool to avoid and minimize hazardous impacts of environment in early stage to predict with,

Base line,mitigation surveys

Precisely YES. EIA is an anticipatory mechanism in principle/process. However, EIA of Disaster is very useful in understanding needs (in terms of relief and immediate / early recovery), and issues for recovery (sustainable recovery) along the process of sustainable reconstruction approaches. SEA is also useful in assessing disaster risk impacts of major policy decisions including land use, subsidies, material substitution, etc. Disaster risk assessment need to be integrated inherently into EIA process. But what is actually needed is a science-policy-practice process based on capacity building and pilots showcasing the mechanism and benefits.

Environmental Impact Assessment should consider the risk of the disaster impact in the study. For spesific site that vulnerable tidak the disaster event. So EIA Will proposed suficient robust mitigation measure.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310465466_Environmental_Impact_Assessment_Elucidating_Policy-Planning_for_Natural_Disaster_Management

(PDF) Environmental Impact Assessment: Elucidating Policy ...

https://www.pioj.gov.jm/Portals/0/Sustainable_Development/Final%20DaLA%20Handbook_Jamaica_Feb11_2013.pdf

Socio-economic and Environmental Disaster Impact Assessment ...

http://conferences.iaia.org/2015/Final-Papers/Sangalang,%20Stephanie%20-%20Framework%20for%20natural%20disaster%20impact%20assessment.pdf

Framework for natural disaster impact assessment - International ...

https://www.intechopen.com/books/environmental-change-and-sustainability/disaster-risk-management-and-social-impact-assessment-understanding-preparedness-response-and-recove

Disaster Risk Management and Social Impact Assessment ...