The technologies, processes and products we develop have impacts on the environment and our health. The policies adopted to regulate the risks of such developments may themselves pose unintended consequences. These complexities pose challenges for both private innovation and public oversight. They also present opportunities to improve understanding and decision-making. An important step in enabling such improvements is to understand the interconnected physical, economic, legal and cultural factors along the lifecycle of a set of decisions related to characterizing and managing risks.

The goal of Decisions on Complex Interdisciplinary Problems of Health and Environmental Risk (DECIPHER) was to improve holistic understanding of health and environmental risks through the design, research and generation of a comprehensive profile motivated by a specific risk and then to expand the scope to include associated contexts, decisions and outcomes. The Bass Connections project team focused on a series of decision scenarios related to drinking water quality. Scenarios were chosen to provide a representative set of contaminants, sources, decisions and affected populations.

The team brought together research expertise from multiple disciplines to tell the story of past risk-based scenarios on the topic of drinking water. The resulting profile provided a systematic unpacking of what may have originally been seen as an isolated hazard, but turned out to be more complex, providing context in terms of history, culture, science, social science, uncertainty, regulation, public narrative and trade-offs. Team members also generated an associated teaching guide for the final profile to enable its use in future courses related to decision-making for health and environmental risks.

Timing

Fall 2018 – Spring 2019  

Team Outputs 

Coal Ash in Belmont, NC

Stories of North Carolina Drinking Water Kathleen Burns, Nadratun Chowdhury, Rupanjali Karthik and Tommy Lin. Durham, NC. April 16, 2019.

From Source to Tap: DeCIPHERing Risks of Drinking Water in North Carolina (poster by Shabib Ansari, Nicholas Anuzis, Mark Borsuk, Kathleen M. Burns, Ryan Calder, Nadratun Chowdhury, Richard T. Di Giulio, Tyler Felgenhauer, Piyush Gambhir, Christine Ogilvie Hendren, Grace Jeffrey, Rupanjali Karthik, Kailai Lin, Yue Lin, Carly Osborne, Jandé Thomas, Priscilla Wald, Samantha Wind, Jonathan B. Wiener, Clara Yoon, Hannah Zhuang, presented at Bass Connections Showcase, Duke University, April 17, 2019)

Periodic Tables: Coal Ash, Lead, and Aging infrastructure: Stories of North Carolina Drinking Water (presentation by Kathleen Burns, Nadratun Chowdhury, Rupanjali Karthik, Tommy Lin at Motorco, Durham, NC, April 16, 2019)

Reflections

Faculty Perspectives: Christine Ogilvie Hendren

Faculty Perspectives: Jonathan Wiener

Faculty Perspectives: Mark Borsuk

Videos

Periodic Tables: Stories of North Carolina Drinking Water

This Team in the News

Six Ph.D. Graduates Who Leveraged Bass Connections for Their Doctoral Training

Student Spotlight

“Endlessly Helpful“: How Duke is Making Sure Graduate Students Have the Skills to Manage Real-world Projects

Lead, Coal Ash and Aging Infrastructure: Assessing North Carolina’s Drinking Water

“Truly Phenomenal” Doctoral Student and “Unparalleled” Postdoc Honored for Outstanding Mentorship

“This Is Not a Course, It’s a Joint Research Project:” Advice from a Bass Connections Team Leader

Join Us at Motorco for Stories of North Carolina Drinking Water

Our Nearby Dams Worked After Florence. But Someday They Won’t

Don’t Drink the Tap

See related teams, DECIPHER: Decisions on the Risks and Benefits of Geoengineering the Climate (2019-2020) and Decisions on Complex Interdisciplinary Problems of Health and Environmental Risk (2017-2018).