Uncertainty in Risk Assessment, Risk Management, and Decision Making

ISBN-13: 9781468453195 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 548 str.

V. T. Covello; Lester B. Lave;Alan Moghissi

Opis

The subject of this volume--uncertainties in risk assessment and management--reflects an important theme in health, safety, and environ mental decision making. MOst technological hazards are characterized by substantial uncertainty. Recent examples include nuclear waste disposal, acid rain, asbestos in schools, carcinogens in food, and hazardous waste. realing with such uncertainty is arguably the most difficult and challeng ing task facing risk assessors and managers today. Four primary sources of uncertainty in risk assessment and management can be identified: (1) uncertainties about definitions; (2) uncertainties about scientific facts; (3) uncertainties about risk perceptions and atti tudes; and (4) uncertainties about values. Uncertainties about definitions derive primarily from disagreements about the meaning and interpretation of key concepts, such as probability. Uncertainties about scientific facts derive primarily from disagreements about failure modes, the probability and magnitude of adverse health or environmental consequences, cause and effect relationships, dose-response relationships, and exposure patterns. Uncertainties about risk perceptions and attitudes derive primarily from disagreements about what constitutes a significant or acceptable level of risk. Uncertainties about values derive primarily from disagreements about the desirability or worth of alternative risk management actions or conse quences. The papers in this volume address each of these sources of uncertainty from a variety of perspectives. Reflecting the broad scope of risk assess ment and risk management research, the papers include contributions from safety engineers, epidemiologists, toxicologists, chemists, biostatisticians, biologists, decision analysts, economists, psychologists, political scien tists, sociologists, ethicists, and lawyers."

Spis treści

Uncertainty and Risk Assessment: Perspectives from the Social, Behavioral and Policy Sciences.- Policy Issues Related to Worst Case Risk Analyses and the Establishment of Acceptable Standards of De Minimis Risk.- Studies on the Applicability of NSF/PRA Sponsored Research to the Management of Specific Risk Situations.- Divergent Approaches to Uncertainty in Risk Assessment: Mathematical Expression Compared to Circumstantial Evidence.- Managing Technological Risks: U.S. and Japanese Approaches.- Risk Management, Assessment, and Acceptability.- Risk Appraisal — Can It be Improved by Formal Decision Models?.- Insurance Market Assessment of Technological Risks.- Public Recognition of Hazard.- Managing Differences in Individual Risk Perceptions: A Pilot Experiment to Integrate Individual Perceptions.- Stress from Risk Uncertainties.- The Industry — Regulatory Interactive Process for Resolution of Severe Accident Questions for Nuclear Power.- The Bureaucratic Dimension to Risk Analysis: The Ultimate Uncertainty.- Risk Assessment and the Law: Evolving Criteria by Which Carcinogenicity Risk Assessments are Evaluated in the Legal Community.- Estimating the Risk from Flooding and Evaluating Worry.- Communicating Uncertainty for Regulatory Decisions.- The Reliability of Individual and Pooled Expert Judgments.- Learning from the Blind Men and the Elephant, or Seeing Things Whole in Risk Management.- Value and Function of Information in Risk Management.- Communicating Scientific Information About Health and Environmental Risks: Problems and Opportunities from a Social and Behavioral Perspective.- Uncertainty and Risk Assessment: Perspective from the Environmental and Health Sciences.- Risk Analysis or Risk Assessment: A Proposal for Consistent Definitions.- Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields and Brain Tumors.- Uncertainty in Population Risk Estimates for Environmental Contaminants.- Analysis of Uncertainties in CRAC2 Calculations: The Inhalation Pathway.- Auditing Waste Disposal Facilities.- Analysis of Uncertainties in CRAC2 Calculations: Wet Deposition and Plume Rise.- Use of Health Effect Risk Estimates and Uncertainty in Formal Regulatory Proceedings: A Case Study Involving Atmospheric Particulates.- Application of Estimated Excess Lifetime Cancer Risk in Field Situations.- Model Uncertainty: Implications for Animal Low-Dose Cancer Risk Assessment Experiments.- Multiple Time Measures are Necessary to Reduce Uncertainty in Dose-Response Modeling: Time- and Dose-Mechanisms of the ED01 Study.- 4,4’ — Methylenedianiline: Risk Assessment and Risk Management.- Uncertainty and Risk Assessment: Perspectives from Engineering and Statistics.- Fuzzy Hierarchical Analysis.- Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) Risk Assessment.- Examining the Realities of Risk Management.- Integrated Economic Risk Management in a Nuclear Power Plant.- The OREDA Handbook and its Role in Offshore Risk Analysis.- Warning Systems: Response Models and Optimization.- Uncertainty Analysis as Applied to Probabilistic Risk Assessment.- Analysis of Risks of Diversion of Plutonium or Highly Enriched Uranium.- An Assessment of the Risk to Plant Personnel and the Public from Petroleum Refinery Accidents.- Incompleteness in Data Bases: Impact on Parameter Estimation Uncertainty.- Risk Assessment of Hazardous Material Transportation.