We encourage you to submit an abstract to and/or spread the word about the session Expert Knowledge Elicitation in environmental assessments – subjective, but scientific (Track 4-Ecological Risk Assessment and Human Health Risk Assessment of chemicals, other stressors and mixtures) at the forthcoming Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) meeting in Copenhagen, in May 2022 (https://europe2022.setac.org ).
This will be an opportunity to share and discuss recent advances in expert knowledge elicitations and how such elicitations can support risk assessment. It will also be an opportunity to introduce expert elicitation as a scientific method to the wider community of SETAC.
The abstract submission deadline is 1 December 2021. Abstracts should be submitted via the online submission page https://europe2022.setac.org
We look forward to receiving your contribution!
Ullrika Sahlin, Anca Hanea and Dmytro Perepolkin (Session chairs)
Session abstract
Expert Knowledge Elicitation (a.k.a. Structured Expert Judgement) is a formal process for eliciting and combining judgments from subject-matter experts about the relevant quantities in scientific assessments. Expert opinion and judgment are used in statistical modelling and inference (e.g., as parameter estimates or as priors in Bayesian inference) and decision-making. Elicited judgments about an uncertain quantity often take the form of a subjective probability distribution for that quantity. If judgments are obtained from several experts, they may need to be combined, unless the experts reach consensus.
The quality of the elicited data may be hampered by the experts’ limited experience with making probabilistic judgements and/or the poor use of elicitation protocols in practical applications. Because humans are prone to cognitive biases, logical errors and social influences (e.g., peer pressure) when making (probabilistic) judgements, formal Expert Knowledge Elicitation protocols have been designed to address and minimize these effects. Expert Knowledge Elicitation has been used for a long time, and is increasingly being used to fill data gaps and to quantify uncertainty. Disciplined and consistent elicitation based on scientific insight from cognitive psychology and probability theory, combined with the domain knowledge and practical experience in environmental assessment can turn subjective judgements into a solid scientific basis for making policy recommendations and assessing relevant risks.
The purpose of this session is to revisit the methodological framework and to bring up the recent advances within the Expert Knowledge Elicitation, particularly focusing on its usefulness for environmental assessment. We welcome contributions on methodological topics such as :
- applied examples demonstrating the protocols for elicitation,
- approaches to combining or conferencing the expert judgements,
- methods of integrating expert judgements with empirical evidence (e.g., Bayesian inference with informed priors),
- elicitation of variable quantities; functions, or uncertainty in conclusions from scientific assessments, etc.,
- elicitation using precise or bounded probabilities, novel approaches to fit probability distributions to expert judgements,
- methods to extract and use experts’ rationales behind their quantitative assessments.
We also welcome contributions about any other recent developments to strengthen the use and scientific rigour of Expert Knowledge Elicitation when used for assessment.