COVID-19: Confronting a New World Risk

This comprehensive book looks at COVID-19, along with other recent infectious disease outbreaks, with the broad aim of providing constructive lessons and critical reflections from across a wide range of perspectives and disciplinary interests within the risk analysis field.

The chapters in this edited volume probe the roles of risk communication, risk perception, and risk science in helping to manage the ever-growing pandemic that was declared a public health emergency of international concern in the beginning of 2020. A few chapters in the book also include relevant content discussing past disease outbreaks, such as Zika, Ebola and MERS-CoV. This book distils past and present knowledge, appraises current responses, introduces new ideas and data, and offers key recommendations, which will help illuminate different aspects of the global health crisis. It also explores how different constructive insights offered from a ‘risk perspective’ might inform decisions on how best to proceed in response as the pandemic continues.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Risk Research.

Jamie Wardman is Assistant Professor of Risk Management at Nottingham University Business School, UK. His research is primarily focussed on the sociology of risk and the theory and practice of risk communication as this relates to such issues as organisational operations, science and technology controversies, emergency preparedness, crisis response, public policy, and health and safety. He is particularly interested in how sociocultural perspectives on risk and its representation can help inform risk management policy design, operations and evaluation.

Ragnar E. Löfstedt is Professor of Risk Management and the Director of King’s Centre for Risk Management, UK, where he teaches and conducts research on risk communication and management. Ragnar has conducted research in risk communication and management in such areas as renewable energy policy, transboundary environmental issues (acid rain and nuclear power), health and safety, telecommunications, biosafety, pharmaceuticals, and the siting of the building of incinerators, fuel policy, nuclear waste installations and railways.