Publication Name

6. Report reviewed, revised and published:

Once the first draft is compiled by the

Editorial Committee it should be circulated to all the experts involved in the EE

assessment and writing of the report in order to be thoroughly reviewed. This

review exercise could be done remotely but the organization of a validation

workshop could bring added value as it would provide the editorial committee a

good sense of the overall endorsement of the whole of the report by the experts

that have contributed to its production. Next, peer reviewed by an independent,

geographically diverse, group of experts that have not been involved in its

production is carried out and the report is revised by the authors taking into account

the reviewers comments. The peer-reviewed, final version of the report may go

through technical edition, graphic design and layout processes prior to publication.

This whole process may differ in duration depending on the natural and political

heterogeneity of the assessment area, the amount of experts to be used for the

assessment and the specific steps chosen from the ones suggested above. A reasonable

duration would normally be between 6 and 18 months.

Figure 1. Diagram illustrating the time-line for one complete cycle of the SOME-EE process. Between

6 and 18 months are needed to plan and execute the process.

3. The SOME Assessment Expert Elicitation

Method

3.1. Assessment Framework

The United Nations World Ocean Assessment

) uses

the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Response (DPSIR) framework (Fig. 2) as a basis on

which to build its structure and organize its content. The DPSIR, in turn, clearly identifies

the place of assessment of environmental condition (the State) within a broad

management framework. The purpose of SOME assessments is to fulfill the need of

measuring the “State” and the “Impacts” in order to design new government policy

“Responses” as well as to gauge the effectiveness of those already implemented.

The DPSIR framework suggests at least three possible approaches for structuring any

SOME assessment: i) Pressures; ii) Habitats; and iii) Ecosystem Services.

Using pressures to structure an assessment has the advantages that the associated

human activities are commonly linked with data collection and reporting structures for

regulatory compliance purposes. For instance, permits that are issued for offshore oil and