Quality assurance in environmental modelling

The different view of scientists and decision makers in risk assessment, the gap between needs and opportunities, the increasing number of models and their wide application by practical users with different background make necessary to ensure the quality and performance of modelling. For this reason, it is very important to have a clear description of the use and the limitation of the model and the input data useability as well as the assumption and suggestions applied in the risk assessment process. To comply with the general quality requirements a risk assessor should manage the questions of data needs, variability, uncertainties inherent to each component of risk assessment. Statement of working hypothesis and applied models that improve understanding of numerical risk estimates is essential.