Review of Risk Assessment: Procedures and Protocols by Edward A. McBean

Defining the intent of the book as describing the methodologies, mathematical notation, and assumptions typically used in risk assessment in the preface, Professor McBean sets the stage for what the book is about and what to expect therein. Because of increasing public concern about environmental quality and protection these days, this book on risk assessment with emphasis on procedures and protocols could not be more timely. Numerous illustrative practical examples along with a solutions manual make it unique and highly valuable in environmental hydrology and water resources engineering. Further, it integrates theory and practice and therefore unfolds new vistas for research and practice in environmental and water resources engineering.

Introducing the background to risk assessment and management in Chapter 1, the subject matter of the remainder of the book is divided into three parts encompassing 11 chapters and an appendix. Chapter 1 discusses general aspects of risk assessment and management, including the need for risk quantification, environmental risk, quantifying risk, data and their characteristics, uncertainty and errors, and approaches for statistical analyses. This chapter contains a wealth of information and articulates various aspects related to risk in an easy-to-understand manner.

Part I on methodologies for risk assessment comprises Chapters 2–4. Chapter 2 is “Introduction to Risk Assessment” and discusses challenges to risk assessment, categories of risk, basics of environmental risk assessment, and calculating risk in a variety of scenarios. Several practical examples that people normally think of and apply in their daily lives illustrate different concepts and make the chapter richly informative. Chapter 2 deals with the factors influencing the assessment and management of risk, including perception versus reality, role of the public, people’s behavior, the tradeoff between contributing factors, influence of the media, risk approaches, and hazard. This chapter is well written and very useful. “Characteristics of Environmental Quality Data” is Chapter 4, a statistical chapter discussing those aspects that are covered in a standard statistical book. However, what makes the chapter different from the standard statistical material is the discussion of real-world data and examples based on these data.

Part II, containing three chapters, deals with the characterization of common distributions. Chapter 5 discusses the normal distribution, including distribution characteristics, goodness-of-fit tests, data transformation, use, and $t$-distribution. The lognormal distribution is covered in Chapter 6, and Poisson, extreme value, Gumbel, and Pearson Type III distributions are discussed in Chapter 7. Several illustrative examples using real-world data from environmental science and engineering enrich these chapters.

Part III, comprising five chapters, is “Hypothesis Testing of Environmental Quality.” Chapter 8, “Identification of System Changes and Outliers Using Control Charts,” presents tolerance intervals, confidence intervals, confidence limits using normal distribution, confidence limits for lognormally distributed data, nonparametric confidence limits, prediction interval characterizations, and detection of outliers. It is a very useful chapter. Chapter 9 deals with hypothesis testing and discusses steps for significance testing, Student’s $t$-test, one-sided and two-sided tests, effect of unequal variance, effect of non-normality on hypothesis testing, acceptance and rejection regions, power of discrimination tests, and $t$-test and its variants. This chapter is very informative. “Multiple Comparisons Using Parametric Analyses” is Chapter 10 and describes ANOVA, development of null hypothesis, one-way ANOVA, two-way tests of ANOVA, homogeneity of variance and tests, ANOVA procedure, data transformation, and multiple comparisons. These concepts and procedures are illustrated with real-world data and examples.

Chapter 11 is “Testing Differences between Monitoring Records When Censored Data Records Exist,” and discusses alternative types of censoring, procedures for statistical analysis of environmental data sets, substitution methods, test of proportion and other tests, maximum likelihood procedure, and multiple detection limits. This well-written chapter presents useful examples. Chapter 12, “Nonparametric Procedures,” includes single-comparison procedures, Mann-Whitney tests, sign test for paired observations, multiple comparison procedures, and Kruskal-Wallis test. The chapter is quite instructive.

This is an excellent book, written in a lucid and an easy-to-follow style. It will be an outstanding reference or textbook and an insightful source of information for students and faculty wishing to work in the area of risk assessment and management. Professor McBean has brought forth his more than four decades of teaching, research, and practical experience to bear on the extraordinary quality of the book. He deserves much applause for writing this treatise, which should be a compulsory read for students in environmental and water resources engineering.