Impact Assessment (PDF)

Offers solutions and best practices to respond to recurrent
problems and contemporary challenges in the field

Since the publication of the first edition of Environmental
Impact Assessment in 2003, both the practice and theory of
impact assessment have changed substantially. Not only has the
field been subject to a great deal of new regulations and
guidelines, it has also evolved tremendously, with a greater
emphasis on strategic environmental, sustainability, and human
health impact assessments. Moreover, there is a greater call for
impact assessments from a global perspective. This Second
Edition, now titled Impact Assessment to reflect its
broader scope and the breadth of these many changes, offers
students and practitioners a current guide to today's impact
assessment practice.

Impact Assessment begins with an introduction and then a
chapter reviewing conventional approaches to the field. Next, the
book is organized around recurrent problems and contemporary
challenges in impact assessment process design and management,
enabling readers to quickly find the material they need to solve
tough problems, including:

* How to make impact assessments more influential, rigorous,
rational, substantive, practical, democratic, collaborative,
ethical, and adaptive

* How each problem and challenge-reducing process would operate
at the regulatory and applied levels

* How each problem can be approached for different impact
assessment types--sustainability assessment, strategic
environmental assessment, project-level EIA, social impact
assessment, ecological impact assessment, and health impact
assessment

* How to link and combine impact assessment processes to operate
in situations with multiple overlapping problems, challenges, and
impact assessment types

* How to connect and combine impact assessment processes

Each chapter first addresses the topic with current theory and
then demonstrates how that theory is applied, presenting
requirements, guidelines, and best practices. Summaries at the end
of each chapter provide a handy tool for structuring the design and
evaluation of impact assessment processes and documents. Readers
will find analyses and new case studies that address such issues as
multi-jurisdictional impact assessment, climate change, cumulative
effects assessment, follow-up, capacity building, interpreting
significance, and the siting of major industrial and waste
facilities.

Reflecting current theory and standards of practice, Impact
Assessment is appropriate for both students and practitioners
in the field, enabling them to confidently respond to a myriad of
new challenges in the field.