NUSAP is a notational system for the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy, based on five categories for characterizing any quantitative statement: Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment and Pedigree. NUSAP was introduced by
Silvio Funtowicz
Silvio O. Funtowicz (born 1946) is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies.
He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with ...
and
Jerome Ravetz
Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP ...
in the 1990 book ''
Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy''.
[Funtowicz, S. & Ravetz J., 1990, Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.] See also van der Sluijs et al. 2005.
[van der Sluijs, J., Craye, M., Funtowicz, S., Kloprogge, P., Ravetz, J., and Risbey, J. (2005) Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Measures of Uncertainty in Model based Environmental Assessment: the NUSAP System, Risk Analysis, 25 (2). p. 481-492.]
The concept
The name "NUSAP" is an acronym for the categories just mentioned.
* Numeral will usually be an ordinary number;
* Unit refers to the units used in Numeral;
* Spread is an assessment of the error in the value of the Numeral;
* Assessment is a summary of salient qualitative judgements about the information - this can be of statistical nature (a significance level) or more general, e.g. involving terms such as 'conservative' or 'optimistic'. If the number is model-generated Assessment may include an estimate of the quality of the related uncertainty and
sensitivity analysis
Sensitivity analysis is the study of how the uncertainty in the output of a mathematical model or system (numerical or otherwise) can be divided and allocated to different sources of uncertainty in its inputs. A related practice is uncertainty anal ...
;
* Pedigree is an evaluative description of the mode of production and of anticipated use of the information.
The pedigree can be expressed by means of a matrix; the columns represent the various phases of production or use of the information, and each column contains marks to rank the performance. Marks can be numerical as well as qualitative, see an exampl
here Recent applications of NUSAP are in the field of climate science,
[Van Der Sluijs, J.P., Wardekker, J.A., 2015, Critical appraisal of assumptions in chains of model calculations used to project local climate impacts for adaptation decision support - The case of Baakse Beek, Environmental Research Letters, 10(4), doi:10.1088/1748-9326/10/4/045005.][Lorenz, S; Dessai, S; Paavola, J; Forster, P M., 2015, The communication of physical science uncertainty in European National Adaptation Strategies, Climatic Change132.1 (Sep 2015): 143-155.] hydrology,
[Zhu, Q., Xu, X., Gao, C., Ran, Q.-H., Xu, Y.-P., 2013, Qualitative and quantitative uncertainties in regional rainfall frequency analysis, Journal of Zhejiang University: Science A, Volume 16, Issue 3, 2015, Pages 194-203.] medical research
[Kloprogge, P., Van der Sluijs, J.P., Petersen, A.C., 2011, A method for the analysis of assumptions in model-based environmental assessments, Environmental Modelling and Software, 26(3), 289-301.] and risk assessment.
[Ides Boone, Yves Van der Stede, Jeroen Dewulf, Winy Messens, Marc Aerts, Georges Daube and Koen Mintiens, 2010, NUSAP: a method to evaluate the quality of assumptions in quantitative microbial risk assessment, Journal of Risk Research, 13(3), 337-352.][Christine Louise Berner, Roger Flage, 2016, Comparing and integrating the NUSAP notational scheme with an uncertainty based risk perspective, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 156, Pages 185–194.]
Applications relevant to the activities of the European Food Safety Authority
EFSA
The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) is the agency of the European Union (EU) that provides independent scientific advice and communicates on existing and emerging risks associated with the food chain. EFSA was established in February 2002, ...
are
Bouwknegt and Havelaar (2015)ref name="EFSA">Bouwknegt M and Havelaar AH, 2015. Uncertainty assessment using the NUSAP approach: a case study on the EFoNAO tool. EFSA supporting publication 2015: EN-663, 20 pp. an
EFSA BIOHAZ Panel, (2015)[EFSA BIOHAZ Panel (EFSA Panel on Biological Hazards), 2015. Scientific Opinion on the development of a risk ranking toolbox for the EFSA BIOHAZ Panel. EFSA Journal 2015;13(1):3939, 131 pp. doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2015.3939.]
Together with
Sensitivity auditing NUSAP can be considered as a method useful at the science policy interface - when numbers produced by either experiment, survey or mathematical modelling need to be used in the appraisal or the formulation of a policy. See also
Post-normal science
Post-normal science (PNS) was developed in the 1990s by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz.Funtowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R., 1991. "A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues", in Costanza, R. (ed.), Ecological Economic ...
.
[Funtowicz, S.O. and Jerome R. Ravetz (1991). "A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues." In Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability. Ed. Robert Costanza. New York: Columbia University Press: 137–152.]
[Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. R. 1992. Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of postnormal science. In S. Krimsky & D. Golding (Eds.), Social theories of risk (pp. 251–273). Westport, CT: Greenwood.][Funtowicz, S. O. & Ravetz, J. R. 1993. Science for the post-normal age. Futures, 25(7), 739–755.]
An early description of NUSAP is due to Funtowicz and Ravetz.
[S. 0. Funtowicz and J.R. Ravetz, 1992, Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy, Radical Statistics, 50 (Spring '92), 31-34.](_blank)
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External links
The web page of NUSAP
maintained by Jeroen van der Sluijs, Universities of Utrecht (NL) and Bergen (NO).
NUSAP – philosophical background, by Jerome R. Ravetz
References
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Epistemology