Environmental Site-Specific Risk Assessments—A Review of Methodological Frameworks, Contaminated Land Assessment, and Ecological Risk Characterization Approaches

Environmental site-specific risk assessment (SSRA) has developed into a complex, multi-tiered discipline that integrates contaminated land characterization, ecological endpoint selection, exposure pathway analysis, and uncertainty quantification to facilitate remediation decision-making. This literature review integrates findings from 33 highly relevant peer-reviewed publications over three decades (1994–2024). Overall, our narrative synthesis indicated that while SSRA methodologies share a common conceptual foundation, the implementation varies notably across regions, contaminants, and ecological contexts. This review reveals a gradual move away from deterministic screening-level assessments and toward probabilistic, spatially explicit frameworks that incorporate multiple lines of evidence, advanced uncertainty analysis, and decision support systems. The key findings show that tiered assessment methods that combine screening and definitive evaluations are still the most common and that Bayesian networks, Monte Carlo simulations, and weight-of-evidence methods are being used more to deal with uncertainty in parameters and models.