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42 <br />STEP 03 -- RATING OF PROBLEM SEVERITY AND URGENCY FOR <br />RANGE OF FUTURE CONDITIONS <br />The purposes of Step 03 are to rate the overall severity and urgency <br />of problems identified and described in Step 02, display this in a draft <br />report and to obtain nationwide review of the draft report. <br />Rating of .Overall _Problem _Sev_eri_ty within and among Geographic Units <br />(Task 1 of Step 03) -- during this task a set of individuals (national judges) <br />will be selected by the NPAC and the Regional Sponsors to develop, from <br />a national viewpoint, ratings of overall problem severity. The ratings <br />will be developed according to a prespecified set of judgmental rating <br />procedures. To insure compatibility,- these procedures will be developed <br />at the same time and in close coordination with the development and testing <br />of both the Problem Identification Survey and the Problem Authentication <br />procedures. <br />The national judges will develop these ratings of overall problem <br />severity by examining (1) the impact of deficiency information contained <br />in the Step 02C displays (including the significant impacts of volume; <br />surface area, depth and cross section; flow characteristics; and aquatic <br />habitat deficiencies) and (2) the report of the Regional Sponsors setting <br />priorities for problem resolution activities from a State and regional view- <br />point. The national judges also will examine summary and, if needed, <br />detailed information in adjacent geographical units to evaluate the geographi- <br />cal extent of the problems. <br />The importance of the impact of the deficiencies in volume, flow <br />characteristics, etc. , for each problem authenticated in Step 02 will be <br />evaluated judgmentally against a preset list of indicators and a preset <br />rating scale. These ratings are called impact ratings. A preliminary <br />list of indicators is displayed on page 31. The rating scale tentatively <br />has been set at 10 levels varying from 1, meaning little or no impact, to <br />10, meaning a very severe impact. Both the zating scale and the list of <br />indicators will be further refined in developing the detailed rating procedures. <br />In addition, the relative importance of the indicators themselves <br />(indicator ratings) will be evaluated judgmentally by the national judges. <br />Then, the composite rating of- problem severity for a given problem <br />within a geographic unit is simply the sum of the products of the indicator <br />ratings times the impact ratings. <br />