Using Expert Participation to Evaluate the Accuracy of Hand-Drawn Water-Table Maps.

Water-table maps are fundamental to hydrogeological studies and a manual, hand-drawn method is still commonly used to produce them. Despite this, the accuracy and variability of such maps have received little attention in international literature. In a unique experiment, 63 groundwater professionals drew water-table equipotential contours based on the same dataset of point measurements and were asked to infer flow directions and predict groundwater elevations at predefined locations.

A spatial causal network approach for multi-stressor risk analysis and mapping for environmental impact assessments.

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) relies on rigorous scientific assessment of all potential causal pathways by which large-scale developments may impact on valued assets in a region. Despite their importance to informed decision-making, many EIAs are flawed by incomplete analysis of causal pathways, limited spatial assessment and a lack of transparency about how risks have been evaluated across the region. To address these, we describe an EIA methodology based on network analysis of potential causal pathways in a given region.