The Functional Resonance Analysis Method for a systemic risk based environmental auditing in a sinter plant: A semi-quantitative approach Riccardo Patriarca ⁎, Giulio Di Gravio, Francesco Costantino, Massimo Tronci Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy abstract article info Article history: Received 6 July 2016 Received in revised form 30 November 2016 Accepted 11 December 2016 Available online xxxx Environmental auditing is a main issue for any production plant and assessing environmental performance is cru- cial to identify risks factors. The complexity of current plants arises from interactions among technological, human and organizational system components, which are often transient and not easily detectable. The auditing thus requires a systemic perspective, rather than focusing on individual behaviors, as emerged in recent research in the safety domain for socio-technical systems. We explore the significance of modeling the interactions of sys- tem components in everyday work, by the application of a recent systemic method, i.e. the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM), in order to define dynamically the system structure. We present also an innovative evolution of traditional FRAM following a semi-quantitative approach based on Monte Carlo simulation. This paper represents the first contribution related to the application of FRAM in the environmental context, more- over considering a consistent evolution based on Monte Carlo simulation. The case study of an environmental risk auditing in a sinter plant validates the research, showing the benefits in terms of identifying potential critical activities, related mitigating actions and comprehensive environmental monitoring indicators. © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Environmental risk Environmental audit Environmental impact assessment Functional resonance Monte Carlo simulation 1. Introduction Any organization that aims to control its activities generally per- forms environmental monitoring and auditing, to limit or prevent envi- ronmental harms. Respectively, the environmental monitoring and environmental auditing are related to the operational and the manage- rial status of the organization. However, in practice as well as in litera- ture, these expressions are often used interchangeably or overlapped (Viegas et al., 2013). Monitoring focuses on stringent procedural aspects such as sampling, extraction and calibration (Rubio and Pérez-Bandito, 2009) and it consists basically on capturing, controlling and reporting a specific event while it occurs. On the other hand, auditing consists of periodically reviewing (Ruiz-Padillo et al., 2016) how policy, practices, and operations in a specific process, affect the environment, then sug- gesting possible mitigating actions (Thompson and Wilson, 1994). Envi- ronmental auditing acquires a risk-oriented structure (Boiral and Gendron, 2011; Knechel, 2007; Power, 2003) and thus the risk investi- gation aimed at risk reduction becomes one of its cornerstones (Oliveira et al., 2011). On this path, the Environmental Audit (EA) ac- quires a crucial role in auditing. EA is a management tool, which evalu- ates the environmental performance of a process plant. EA should answer several company managers' questions related to compliance with regulations, quality of practices, operational and economic level of environmental impact (Noble and Nwanekezie, 2016), also assessing potential improvement for the plant itself (UNEP, 1990) EA has a strong risk-oriented perspective (risk-based audit – RBA) and mostly focuses on the plant's operational aspects and their impact on environmental products, especially when evaluating potential cor- rections of the Environmental Management System (EMS). Identifying hazards and risks is of utmost importance, in order to minimize the ac- cidents' likelihood. RBA should focus on the environmental contribution rather than on the economic performance, differently from the existing environmental performance auditing studies (He et al., 2015). RBA ana- lyzes agents and processes that may have an environmental impact: rather than focusing only on technical aspects of the plant, it should consider the interactions among different factors, considering the plant as a whole. This conception is particularly relevant in case of plants or processes characterized by not-negligible interactions among human, technological and organizational aspects. For a more reliable RBA, Harris et al. (2009) argued the need to in- clude multiple causal factors, mapping more properly their causal path, especially in case of a large analysis, or in real case scenarios, with a not-negligible uncertainty (Cardenas and Halman, 2016). Evolv- ing this idea, this paper models the interactions among system agents, adopting the Functional Resonance Analysis Method (FRAM) in order to evaluate those factors contributing to generate a potentially relevant environmental impact. In its traditional structure, FRAM defines a model showing the interactions among agents, and defining variability based on linguistic evaluations of performance. Starting from a recent explorative research in the domain of safety (Patriarca et al., 2017), Environmental Impact Assessment Review 63 (2017) 72–86 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Via Eudossiana 18, 00184 Rome, Italy. E-mail address: riccardo.patriarca@uniroma1.it (R. Patriarca). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eiar.2016.12.002 0195-9255/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Environmental Impact Assessment Review journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eiar