Important Announcement about CARAT

IMPORTANT

From May 1st, 2005, the CARAT Data Base will be no longer accessible on the OECD web site.  The Working Group that manages the OECD Chemical Accidents Programme has decided to stop its support to CARAT.

Why will CARAT be removed?

Since the creation of the data base in 1999, the Working Group on Chemical Accidents has been regularly requested to make entries.  CARAT is a “living” system, i.e. participating countries and organisations should periodically add and edit information to keep entries complete and up to date.  After a substantial initial interest, it has been more and more difficult to convince delegations to remain active in supporting CARAT and increase the number of entries; this is essential to maintain a viable system. 

An overall assessment of CARAT was carried out in 2003.  Unfortunately, the survey did not provide a great insight into the value of the data base as there were a limited number of responses.  Afterwards, the Working Group recognised that, albeit the original purpose of facilitating discussions between countries about risk assessment processes through the use of objective language has been achieved, CARAT is suffering a major flaw: there are not enough new and updated entries in the system to be useful and viable.  A number of reasons were put forward: the labour-intensive and not user-friendly procedure for data entry, the fact that entries are made in English only, the use of an internet technology which is becoming outdated, and the lack of hyperlinks to source documents or web sites.

How will CARAT be phased out?

The CARAT data base will be removed from the public OECD web site on May 1, 2005.  It will be stored on CD or other medium and the source code will be made available to any organisation, upon request.

Is there another organisation to house CARAT?

The Secretariat will be pleased to share the source code with any other organisation, e.g. a government authority, university or industry that would like to house the CARAT data base.