Pressure: Pressures are human actions that can induce environmental change and are usually associated with actions with the potential to cause damage or degradation. Pirrone et al (2005) and Robinson et al (2008) who define pressure as: the mechanism through which an activity has an effect on any part of an ecosystem.

Ecological sensitivity: The reaction level of the environmental change caused by internal and external factors.

Environmental impact: Effects to organisms or their environment, possibly adverse, caused by development, industrial, or infrastructural projects or a pollutant. Impacts are the consequences of pressures where a change occurs that is different to that expected under natural conditions. These definitions state that pressures can be physical, chemical or biological with the same pressure being caused by a number activities and different pressures potentially resulting in the same impact.

Environmental risk: Risk is broadly defined as the likelihood that a harmful consequence will occur as the result of an action or condition (pressure) and can be evaluated by the probability of the occurrence of an event, as well as its resulting consequence. It involves the combined evaluation of hazards and exposure. Environmental risk assessment (ERA) deals with the interactions of agents or hazards, humans, and ecological resources. It describes human populations, ecological resources, and agents; analyzes agents and exposure potential; characterizes the potential for adverse effects; defines uncertainties; generates options to deal with the risks; and communicates information about the risks to humans and ecosystems. ERA has two components; human health risk assessment and ecological risk assessment. The stages of doing an ERA include: hazard identification and problem formulation, analysis, and risk characterization. The main outputs are the risk management and communication plans (Muralikrishna, I. V. and V. Manickam. 2017).

Environmental risk management: The ERM process involves preparation and use of the processed information derived and presented in various ways, for example, comparative (or relative) risk analysis, cost-benefit analysis, scenario analysis, probabilistic analysis, decision matrix, sensitivity analysis, etc. (Muralikrishna, I. V. and V. Manickam. 2017, 2017).

Cited references:

Pirrone, N., G. Trombino, S. Cinnirella, A. Algieri, G. Bendoricchio, L. Palmeri, 2005. The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) approach for integrated catchment-coastal zone management: preliminary application to the Po catchment-Adriatic Sea coastal zone system. Regional Environmental Change, 5: 111-137.

Robinson, L. A., L. J. White, F. E. Culhane, A. M. Knights, 2013. ODEMM Pressure Assessment Userguide V.2. ODEMM Guidance Document Series No.4. EC FP7 project (244273) ‘Options for Delivering Ecosystem-based Marine Management’. University of Liverpool. ISBN: 978-0-906370-86-5:14 pp. https://odemm.com/sites/default/files/Pressure%20Assessment%20Guide%20V2.pdf (accessed: 28 Feb 2020).

Muralikrishna, I. V., V. Manickam. 2017. Chapter Eight - Environmental Risk Assessment. Pages 135-152 in Environmental Management; I. V. Muralikrishna,V. Manickam, (editors). Butterworth-Heinemann.