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PEER REVIEW AS A QA TOOL FOR PHOTO INTERPRETATION
Citation:
Brilis, G M. AND J G. Lyon. PEER REVIEW AS A QA TOOL FOR PHOTO INTERPRETATION. Presented at 23rd Annual National Conference on Managing Environmental Quality Systems, Tampa, FL, April 15, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
The overall objective of this task is to provide the Agency with improved science guidance and strategies for more effective science management and administration.
Description:
Remotely Sensed (RS) images are used in many ways in the EPA. Eventually, the photo may be interpreted. When images are interpreted, attempts are made by humans to determine what is on the ground (or in the air) by examining the photo or image, and the implementation of Quality Assurance (QA) takes a unique turn.Typically, the quality of an analysis is most often assessed by comparison of a product or result to an external, tangible standard. Deviations from that standard may be a reflection of quality. On the other hand, photo interpretation is, for the most part, a subjective process. Historically, the interpreters experience and education must be relied upon for quality assessment.This paper proposes an additional means for quality assessment, namely peer review.
The EPA published the EPA Peer Review Handbook, 2nd Edition, EPA 100-B-00-001, in December 2000. The reader is encouraged to review this document for detailed information on peer review.This proposal combines the EPA graded approach, QA Categories, and Peer Review in a strategy designed to provide known quality, and ensure that the photo interpretation results are defensible. Unlike QA in other disciplines, photo interpretation is unique in that peer review may be used as a QA procedure, not strictly as a means to determine acceptance by the general scientific community (US Supreme Court, Daubert v Dow, 1993).