Introduction

This coursework exercise promotes directed learning on impact prediction practices in Environmental Assessment. It is intended to allow you to develop a detailed understanding of impact prediction for specific environmental components. It is also designed to promote the development of research skills (such as methodology development and critical analysis) that you will employ in the near future when undertaking your dissertation. It is worth 90% of the
module mark

The title of the research paper is:

“A Critical Evaluation of Impact Prediction Practices against best practice

This title is fixed – under no circumstances should you change it.

The research paper should critically evaluate impact prediction practices in a selected jurisdiction. To do this, you will evaluate a sample of EISs which need to represent, as far as is possible, the full population (of EISs) in the jurisdiction you have chosen. You should investigate impact prediction practices for one environmental component1 and examine how it is covered in three EISs. That is, you are evaluating impact prediction in an EIA system through a sample. You will not receive extra credit for looking at more environmental components or more EISs.

Note that a critical evaluation means you should be able to identify
systemic strengths and weaknesses that would allow you to come up with recommendations for improving practice in the future. On the sample – this is restricted to three EISs just to make this assessment practicable in the time available.

However, you should not simply accept the sample without critical understanding – you need to gain an idea of its representativeness in
order to understand the extent to which you can comment on impact prediction practice in general, so you need to understand what variables affect the quality of EISs and consider whether you can control for them.

That is, you need to understand the extent to which the sample can be used to represent the EIA system in your chosen jurisdiction – otherwise you will not understand the extent to which you have identified systemic issues. You will need to examine literature on EIS quality to do this where some studies have controlled for various variables that influence evaluation scores