Risk Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2007 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2007.00942.x Fostering Innovation in Contaminated Sediments Management Through Multicriteria Technology Assessment and Public Participation T. P. Seager, 1* J. H. Lambert, 2 and K. H. Gardner 3 Management of contaminated sediments is problematic and costly. Several new technologies are under development that may in some cases reduce costs and environmental or ecological impacts. However, there are significant barriers to implementing new technologies, including the increased management complexity, the potential for introducing antagonistic or incom- mensurate objectives that are unfamiliar to stakeholders or regulators, and the difficulty of capturing private, commercial benefits from environmental improvements that may primarily benefit the public. This article identifies several innovative contaminated sediments technolo- gies, discusses the difficulty of proving or quantifying the benefits of new technologies, and presents an agenda for research that would foster partnerships between scientific, govern- ment, and public communities of interest for the purpose of improving innovative technology assessment and environmental decision making. KEY WORDS: Beneficial reuse; multicriteria decision analysis; partnerships for innovation 1. INTRODUCTION New technologies face high barriers to adoption compared to existing technologies for several reasons, including a perceived sense of increased risk, a lack of experience with the new technologies among man- agers and/or regulators, or simply the fact that deci- sionmakers are not aware of the availability of the technology. Although there is evidence that environ- mental technologies are stimulated by legislation, pol- icy, and regulation (see, e.g., Heaton & Banks, 1997; Kemp, 2000; Gerard & Lave, 2005; Taylor et al., 2005), 1 Sustainability Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA. 2 Center for Risk Management of Engineering Systems, 112 Olsson Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA. 3 Center for Contaminated Sediments Research, Gregg Hall, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA. ∗ Address correspondence to T. P. Seager, Sustainability Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623; tel: 585- 475-6612; fax: 585-475-5250; thomas.seager@rit.edu. they may be difficult to move from innovation to com- mercialization. Partly this may be because environ- mental resources exist largely in the public domain where private industry may be unable to fully cap- ture the economic benefits of innovative technologies (Larson & Brahmakulam, 2001). But also, it may be because environmental projects often involve multi- ple stakeholder groups with competing or mutually exclusive interests. Although no single technology is likely to emerge that is perceived by all stakeholders as superior to all competing alternatives on all decision criteria, in some cases multiple criteria may be improved simultane- ously (see, e.g., Haimes, 2004; Zeleny, 2005). In Fig. 1, alternatives A, B, and C lie on an existing Pareto- optimal frontier of cost and risk, wherein the deci- sionmakers are seeking to minimize the cost and risk objectives (e.g., Tsang et al., 2002a, 2002b). The hy- pothetical new alternative D is only available as the result of innovation, and is capable of outperform- ing existing technologies in both cost and risk criteria. 1043 0272-4332/07/0100-1043$22.00/1 C  2007 Society for Risk Analysis