Comparative risk assessment and environmental impact assessment: Similarity in quantitative methods

Management of municipal solid waste sites, toxic liquid waste sites, and former military and industrial contaminated sites is a pressing problem for most urban areas. In most cases these sites require management decisions when planning and instituting redevelopment. Very often decision-making is necessary for one of two cases: development of a new project on a contaminated site, or site conservation. Space limitations, health of local populations, preservation of historic sites - these urban area factors impose significant restrictions on the decision-making process. This present paper will discuss a quantitative analytical method that can be implemented for both Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of development and reconstruction projects at urban contaminated sites. This method was implemented for several projects in St. Petersburg, Russia, including a CRA for a new underground development on a downtown city site contaminated by petroleum products.