Risk

Can we better predict or mitigate the consequences of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes? Can we reduce the number of oil spills? And what should be done to clean up the mess when something does goes wrong? Why are people concerned about nuclear plants, but so reckless when they go skiing, or when they drive their motor cars? And how can we ensure that experts and ordinary citizens exchange meaningful information about hazards?

Over the past fifty years or so, eminent scholars from the decision sciences, geography, sociology, anthropology, and many other fields, have offered useful pointers towards finding an answer to these and other crucial questions. Their prolific and converging efforts have established Risk Analysis as a vivid new discipline, a discipline which this new Routledge collection enables users to discover―or to understand better.

The collection conveys essential lessons about how risks can be better assessed. Sophisticated models about the probability and magnitude of harms have been developed and tested in a variety of fields, for example, by engineers trying to build safer plants, or by toxicologists trying to understand the pathways of pollutants. The materials gathered here also help us to understand how powerful perception drivers shape our views of different risks and, as a consequence, how risk communication may be best conducted. Risk also brings together and makes sense of a body of knowledge that has allowed the development of specific methods to join together these two crucial elements into a coherent management ‘whole’.

Ragnar E. Löfstedt is Professor of Risk Management and Director of King's Centre for Risk Management. He is a renowned expert in the changing nature of regulation in Europe and the role of public's trust in understanding present day regulation. He is Series Editor of the Risk, Society and Policy Series, and author or editor of numerous books, including Facility Siting (2004), Transboundary Risk Management (2001), The Earthscan Reader in Risk and Modern Society (1998) and Cases in Climate Change Policy (1997). Frederic Bouder, formerly with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, is an Assistant Professor within the Department of Technology & Society Studies at Maastricht University. His research concentrates on developing innovative models of risk regulation and communication. He is the book review editor of the Journal of Risk Research, and also the lead editor of The Tolerability of Risk, published by Earthscan in 2008.