SIA, SA, and SEIA

A Social Assessment (SA) is an analysis of the community designed to ascertain how the community is organized, how its people relate to one another, how decisions are made, and other factors. These data can help GSA anticipate issues and establish effective ways to resolve them. The SA describes current conditions, but, unlike SIA, it does not attempt to forecast outcomes if things change.

A Socioeconomic Impact Assessment (sic: SIA) involves looking at economic and sometimes other quantifiable data to estimate how these variables may be affected by a project or alternative. Although the Socioeconomic Impact Assessment and Social Impact Assessment can have the same acronym (SIA), they are not interchangeable. Socioeconomic Impact Assessment (SEIA) is one kind of SIA, and may be an important part of SIA, but it seldom is sufficient in itself to assess impacts on the social environment. Many important aspects of the social environment are not strictly economic, or even quantifiable. For example, the way people feel about the natural environment in which they live may be of critical importance to the identity of their community, but this kind of feeling is not something that can be counted.

Social Impact Assessment

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