title: Do statistical inferences allowing three alternative decisions give better feedback for environmentally precautionary decision-making?
abstract: Environmental policies and guidelines often specify standards for environmental indicators. The first part of this paper argues that, where compliance with these standards is assessed with the help of statistical inference, an inference employing a three-alternatives decision rule can provide more sensible feedback to environmental managers for precautionary decision-making. The second part of the paper shows how a three-alternatives statistical inference about compliance with a percentile standard might be applied to a small number of observations using a non-parametric binomial interval. This interval expression of uncertainty results in the sample size requirements for various percentile ranks becoming explicit.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Sciences, Environment Protection Authority, Ernest Jones Drive, Macleod, Vic. 3085, Australia. Rob.Goudey@epa.vic.gov.au
authors.forename: Rob
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Goudey
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D004782:Environmental Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008432:Mathematical Computing; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012722:Sewage
chemical_list: D012722:Sewage