Article published 14 January 2025

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Guidance accompanying the VALESOR tool

By the end of 2025, VALESOR will deliver a comprehensive report that translates the project’s methodological developments into actionable guidance for tool users.

This guidance is designed for users who seek to understand the criteria behind the selection of default data or wish to make informed choices when replacing or complementing default data with their own.

The guidance focuses on three key elements essential for the quantification of health effects, namely exposure-response functions and unit risk factors linking health impacts to the pollutants considered, exposure data, and baseline health data. For the subsequent monetisation of the health impacts, guidance deals with the selection of economic values and addresses various sources of potential double or zero counting and, hence, how to minimize over- or underestimation of economic health damage. Further economic guidance addresses issues of social inequity and socio-economic status, how to deal with distributional effects over time and also how to proceed when economic unit values for monetisation of health impacts are not readily available.

/ Simone Schucht, Institut national de l'environnement industriel et des risques