Risk Evaluation and Management: (1 Contemporary Issues in Risk Analysis)

Public attention has focused in recent years on an array of technological risks to health, safety, and the environment. At the same time, responsibilities for technological risk as­ sessment, evaluation, and management have grown in both the public and private sectors because of a perceived need to anticipate, prevent, or reduce the risks inherent in modem society. In attempting to meet these responsibilities, legislative, judicial, regulatory, and private sector institutions have had to deal with the extraordinarily complex problems of assessing and balancing risks, costs, and benefits. The need to help society cope with technological risks has given rise to a new intellectual endeavor: the social and behavioral study of issues in risk evaluation and risk management. The scope and complexity of these analyses require a high degree of cooperative effort on the part of specialists from many fields. Analyzing social and behavioral issues requires the efforts of political scientists, sociologists, decision analysts, management scientists, econ­ omists, psychologists, philosophers, and policy analysts, among others.

Table of Contents:
I. Public Perceptions of Risk.- 1. The Psychometric Study of Risk Perception.- 2. Public Perceptions of Technological Risks: A Methodological Study.- 3. Public Disputes about Risky Technologies: Stakeholders and Arenas.- 4. Contemporary Worldviews and Perception of the Technological System.- 5. Risk, Relativism, and Rationality.- II. Risk Evaluation Methods.- 6. Methods for Comparing the Risks of Technologies.- 7. Comparative Analysis of Formal Decision-Making Approaches.- 8. Measuring Risk Attitudes in Risk Analysis.- 9. The Analysis of Risks of Fatalities.- 10. Methods for Analyzing and Comparing Technological Hazards.- 11. Risk-Cost-Benefit Methodology and Equal Protection.- 12. Improving Risk Analysis.- 13. Risk Evaluation: A Review of the Literature.- III. Risk Management.- 14. Alternatives to Government Regulation for the Management of Technological Risks.- 15. Alternative Risk Management Policies for State and Local Governments.- 16. Institutional Mechanisms for Converting Sporadic Agency Decisions into Systematic Risk Management Strategies: OSHA, the Supreme Court, and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.- 17. The Political and Institutional Setting for Risk Analysis.- 18. The Management of Risk.- 19. Approaches to Risk Management: A Critique.- 20. Consent and the Justification of Risk Analysis.- IV. Overview of Risk Evaluation Management.- 21. Science and Analysis: Roles in Risk and Decision Making.- 22. Risk Analysis and Risk Management: A Historical Perspective.