From the Editors

Abstract

This last issue of 2011 has a focus on transportation and hurricane-related risks. We begin with four transportation risk articles. In a perspective piece, Michael Greenberg, Karen Lowrie, Henry Mayer, and Tayfur Altiok, with support from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, assess threats and a set of strategies and decision support tools for protecting rail systems against effects that cascade from the rail system into the larger environments, thereby potentially undermining regional economies. Brett Dickey and Joost Santos examine the important question of how best to deploy limited safety service patrols to protect transportation infrastructure. Their simulations support the idea of flexible rather than predetermined deployments. Using Singapore as an example, Qiang Meng and colleagues study how to reduce risk in critically important tunnels. They compute an excess risk index that points to limiting tunnel size and use. Supported by the Korea Research Foundation, Ik Jae Chung shows the significant role of the Internet in amplifying risk-related information through every branch of the media. Dr. Chung illustrates this idea by looking at public concern about risks from a high-speed railway tunnel project in South Korea. Two articles are about hurricane risk. The EIC wrote this editorial a week after Hurricane Irene dumped 7 inches of rain on New Jersey in late August. The hurricane knocked out the power for about 750,000 people in New Jersey and many in adjacent states, leading to assorted charges of negligence against the utilities. What could the utilities have done? Roshanak Nateghi, Seth Guikema, and Steven Quiring compare statistical approaches for estimating power outage durations during hurricanes. It is clear that SRA members can assist utilities and government regulators by estimating the consequences of storms in ways that would improve strategic planning efforts. Optimistic bias is widely observed in public health and increasingly in related disciplines. Craig Trumbo, Michelle Lueck, Holly Marlatt, and Lori Peek study optimistic bias associated with proximity to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Age, community tenure, and dispositional optimism are predictors, but notably proximity to the events is not. The five remaining articles address familiar risk-related topics. Funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA scientists Vernon Benignus, Philip Bushnell, and William Boyes develop a process to understand the potential for auto accidents caused by inhalational of ethanol fumes in gasoline. They suggest that the likelihood of a fatal car crash increases with acute exposure to organic solvent vapors at concentrations less than 1 ppm, and that their modeling approach could also be applied to estimating other consequences of acute exposure to solvents, including nonfatal car crashes, property damage, and workplace accidents. Nicolas Bronfman and Esperanza Lopez Vazquez examine the relative strength of perceived benefits and trust among undergraduate students in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, the United States, and Spain across a set of issues. The authors find that perceived benefits mediate perception of trust and acceptability. David Clifford and colleagues develop a model to track mites that invade honeybee columns. The authors report that increasing the number of hives and the efficiency of the detection method are the most effective means of decreasing detection time. Hormesis is a widely observed and debated phenomenon with notable implications for risk assessment. Supported by a U.S. NIH grant, Holger Dette, Andrey Pepelyshev, and Weng Kee Wong propose and evaluate a set of models for estimating parameters and variables associated with hormesis. Prior to the Fukushima events, during the period 1976–2004, Fumihiro Yamane, Hideaki Ohgaki, and Kota Asano conducted a hedonic land price analysis around the nuclear power plants in the Mutsu-Ogawara Region, Japan. The authors find little evidence of positive increases in land values and they discuss variations by facility.