Society For Risk Analysis Research Articles

How ChatGPT defines risk?

Large Language Models (LLMs) are prominent AI tools potentially useful in various applications involving natural language interactions and exchanges of information with human users. These models, however, have the potential to spread misinformation and misconceptions, especially when used by individuals lacking the necessary expertise to critically assess their output. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a public available LLM and one of the most renowned. The paper explores whether the information it provides about the concept of risk and some related basic notions can be considered sufficiently correct. Specifically, ChatGPT was first utilized to build a glossary of basic concepts for the risk analysis field, modeled after that of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). The model was then used to assess the quality of the generated entries for clarity, precision, completeness and presence of examples, and to compare such entries to those of the SRA glossary again for quality and for semantic similarity. Independent ChatGPT user sessions were used throughout so as to avoid influencing one output by the previous ones. The results suggest that, while the SRA and ChatGPT entries may differ in focus and scopes, they share a common core and do not conflict in substantial ways. Therefore, we can develop the working hypothesis that ChatGPT does not promote major misconceptions as to the foundational definitions about risk, at least with respect to those provided by the SRA.

Risk science and politics: What is and should be the relationship?

Risk science is the most updated and justified knowledge-in the form of concepts, principles, approaches, methods, and models-for understanding, assessing, characterizing, communicating, and handling risk, with applications. It is also about the practice that gives us this knowledge. It is commonly stated that risk science is politically neutral. This perspective article discusses this assertion by scrutinizing the relationship between risk science and politics. In particular, it looks into the position of The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) on this matter. Using some current risk problems as illustrating examples, including COVID-19 and climate change risk, the article argues that defending the political neutrality aim is paramount, especially with today's increasingly divisive political landscape.

Lessons identified from applications of the Risk Analysis Quality Test Release 1.0.

The Risk Analysis Quality Test Release 1.0 (RAQT1.0) was developed as a framework to encourage mutual understanding between technical risk analysts and risk management decision makers of risk assessment quality indicators. The initial version (release 1.0) was published by the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in 2020 with the intent of learning from early test applications whether the approach was useful and whether changes in approach or contents would be helpful. The results of applications across three diverse fields are reported here. The applications include both retrospective evaluations of past risk assessments and prospective guidance on the design of future risk assessment projects or systems. The fields represented include Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment, Cultural Property Risk Analysis, and Software Development Cyber Risk Analysis. The RAQT1.0 proved helpful for identifying shortcomings in all applications. Ways in which the RAQT1.0 might be improved are also identified.

Probabilistic methods for non-cancer health effects

Noncancer risk assessment methods and harmonization with cancer assessment methods have advanced from the simple divide a No Observed Adverse Effect Level (NOAEL) by a default safety factor or a linear extrapolation to background of the early 1980's. This advance is due in part due to groups such as the American Industrial Health Council, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Society for Risk Analysis, the Society of Toxicology, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the International Programme on Chemical Safety, and to many independent researchers outside of and within a workshop series sponsored by the Alliance for Risk Assessment prompted by the NAS \\. Several of the case studies from this workshop series, and earlier work such as Bogdanffy et al., demonstrate that the dose response assessment of non-cancer toxicity and the harmonization of cancer and non-cancer methods are more than just a simple reflection of treating all non-cancer toxicity as if it has a threshold, or all cancer toxicity as if it did not. Moreover, one recommendation of NAS \\ was to develop a problem formulation with risk managers prior to conducting any risk assessment. If the development of this problem formulation only necessitates the determination of a safe, or virtually safe dose, then the estimation of a Reference Dose (RfD) or virtually safe dose (VSD) or similar constructs should be encouraged. Not all of our environmental problems need a precise quantitative solution.

A framework for understanding risk based on the concepts of ontology and epistemology

Two fundamental philosophical concepts of social science are ontology (idealism and realism), relating to what reality is, and epistemology (epistemological realism, epistemological idealism), relating to how one can obtain knowledge about that reality. These concepts are cornerstones in identifying, understanding, and describing core strategies in sociological theorizing (empiricism, substantialism, rationalism, and subjectivism). Similar philosophical concepts have been introduced and defined in risk science, to explain, assess and understand the risk concept. This paper studies and reconciles these two perspectives with the aim of obtaining new insights on how risks can be better understood, described, and communicated. Earlier work on this topic is extended by using contemporary risk science knowledge, as recently presented by the Society for Risk Analysis. The paper presents a framework for depicting the different ontological and epistemological stands in the risk domain. This framework can be useful for both theoretical and applied researchers studying risk.

Decision-first modeling should guide decision making for emerging risks.

An emerging risk is characterized by scant published data, rapidly changing information, and an absence of existing models that can be directly used for prediction. Analysis may be further complicated by quickly evolving decision-maker priorities and the potential need to make decisions quickly as new information comes available. To provide a forum to discuss these challenges, a virtual conference, "Decision Making for Emerging Risks," was held on June 22-23, 2021, sponsored jointly by the Decision Analysis Society of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and the Decision Analysis and Risk specialty group in the Society for Risk Analysis. Speakers reflected on the work to support decision-makers related to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as experiences in emerging risks across domains from cybersecurity, infrastructure, transportation, energy, food safety, national security, and climate change. Here, we distill the key findings to propose a set of best practice principles for a "decision-first" approach for emerging risks. These discussions underscore the importance of scoping the decision context and the shared responsibility for the development and implementation of the analysis between the analyst and the decision-maker when the context can evolve rapidly. Emerging risks may also favor simpler analytical approaches that increase transparency, ease of explanation, and ability to conduct new analyses quickly. Continued dialogue by the decision and risk analysis communities on the use and development of models for emerging risks will enhance the credibility and usefulness of these approaches.

Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, Causal Analysis, and Economics: A Personal Perspective from More Than 40 years Experience.

I entered the field of risk analysis forty years ago from a background in physics followed by doctoral training and experience in decision analysis. I came into the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) after participating as a committee member in the 1983 National Academies report, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process. The insights and recommendations from this report, and successor reports from 1996 and 2008, merit revisiting on this 40th anniversary. Risk analysis includes risk assessment, a process of summarizing applicable science to inform decisions; and risk management, a process of making informed choices, usually involving multiple stakeholders. Inherent in both is the need to deal with complexity, uncertainty, and differing perspectives and goals. The lessons I have learned include the need for a conceptual separation of risk management from risk assessment, the benefit of an iterative dialogue between these activities, and the wisdom of articulating and assessing what we know, what we want, and what we can do as we seek to understand and manage risks affecting ourselves and those we advise.

Forty Years of Food Safety Risk Assessment: A History and Analysis.

Before the founding of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) in 1980, food safety in the United States had long been a concern, but there was a lack of systematic methods to assess food-related risks. In 1906, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Roosevelt signed, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act to regulate food safety at the federal level. This Act followed the publication of multiple reports of food contamination, culminating in Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle, which highlighted food and worker abuses in the meatpacking industry. Later in the 20th century, important developments in agricultural and food technology greatly increased food production. But chemical exposures from agricultural and other practices resulted in major amendments to federal food laws, including the Delaney Clause, aimed specifically at cancer-causing chemicals. Later in the 20th century, when quantitative risk assessment methods were given greater scientific status in a seminal National Research Council report, food safety risk assessment became more systematized. Additionally, in these last 40 years, food safety research has resulted in increased understanding of a range of health effects from foodborne chemicals, and technological developments have improved U.S. food safety from farm to fork by offering new ways to manage risks. We discuss the history of food safety and the role risk analysis has played in its evolution, starting from over a century ago, but focusing on the last 40 years. While we focus on chemical risk assessment in the U.S., we also discuss microbial risk assessment and international food safety.

Learning to Manage the Multirisk World.

Risk assessment, perception, and management tend to focus on one risk at a time. But we live in a multirisk world. This essay in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) and the journal Risk Analysis suggests that we can-and have already begun to-strengthen risk analysis and policy outcomes by moving from a focus on the single to the multiple-multiple stressors, multiple impacts, and multiple decisions. This evolution can improve our abilities to assess actual risks, to confront and weigh risk-risk trade-offs and innovate risk-superior moves, and to build learning into adaptive regulation that adjusts over time. Recognizing the multirisk reality can help us understand complex systems, foresee unintended consequences, design better policy solutions, and learn to improve.

Improving Disaster Prevention Through Disaster Risk Management (Experience of the All-Russian Public Organization “Russian Scientific Society of Risk Analysis”)

This article is devoted to some experience of the All-Russian Public Organization “Russian Scientific Society for Risk Analysis” (hereinafter referred to as the Society), which celebrated its 22 anniversary on October 2019, 16.This article presents the short experience, analytical, scientific-practical and organizationalcoordination activities of the Society in the field of improvement of the disaster prevention mechanism through disaster risk management.The most deployed, the period from 2016 to 2019 is presented.It was during this period that the Company managed to organize the implementation of relevant practical measures in priority areas in the field of analysis and assessment of risks of natural and man-made emergencies at the municipal and territorial levels, improvement of the mechanism of their management, to outline ways of further development of the directions laid down in the works 2016—2018.

Three influential risk foundation papers from the 80s and 90s: Are they still state-of-the-art?

Three of the most influential scientific works in the risk field, at least in the engineering environment, are Stan Kaplan and John Garrick's paper from 1981 on risk quantification, George Apostolakis’ paper on probability from 1990, and Elisabeth Paté-Cornell's paper on uncertainty levels in risk assessments from 1996. The present article reviews and discusses these works, the aim being to acknowledge their important contributions to risk science and provide insights on how these works have influenced and relate to the state-of-the-art of the risk science of today. It is questioned to what extent these papers still represent state-of-the-art. Recent documents by the Society for Risk Analysis are used as a reference for comparison, in addition to related publications in scientific journals.

About some results of the reporting and election company of the All-Russian Public Organization “Russian Scientifi c Society of Risk Analysis” in 2019

.

Risk aggregation: What does it really mean?

Risk aggregation is a common concept in risk management contexts. Overall, it relates to the process of summing and showing the interaction between single or individual risks, to see the bigger picture. However, its meaning and use are not clear when looking more closely into the concept and comparing various applications. In this paper, we will provide an in-depth study of the aggregation concept, using as a basis a general way of defining and understanding risk (in line with the Glossary from the Society for Risk Analysis), which includes most common perspectives on risk. The aim of the paper is to provide new insight into the concept, in order to strengthen the foundation of risk management and in particular the communication about risk issues.

Cultural Theory's Contributions to Risk Analysis: A Thematic Review with Directions and Resources for Further Research.

Cultural theory (CT) developed from grid/group analysis, which posits that different patterns of social relations-hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist-produce compatible cultural biases influencing assessment of which hazards pose high or low risk and how to manage them. Introduced to risk analysis (RA) in 1982 by Douglas and Wildavsky's Risk and Culture, this institutional approach to social construction of risk surprised a field hitherto focused on psychological influences on risk perceptions and behavior. We explain what CT is and how it developed; describe and evaluate its contributions to the study of risk perception and management, and its prescriptions for risk assessment and management; and identify opportunities and resources to develop its contributions to RA. We suggest how the diverse, fruitful, but scattered efforts to develop CT both inside and outside the formal discipline of RA (as exemplified by the Society for Risk Analysis) might be leveraged for greater theoretical, methodological, and applied progress in the field.

Michael Dourson tapped to lead EPA chemical program

Michael Dourson, President Donald J. Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s office that oversees commercial chemicals and pesticides, is a board-certified toxicologist with decades of experience in risk assessment. Dourson’s close ties to the chemical industry, however, have some environmental groups raising concerns about potential conflicts of interest. Dourson is a professor in the Risk Science Center at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Before joining the university in 2015, he directed the Cincinnati-based nonprofit consulting firm Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA), which he founded in 1995. Dourson also held several positions at EPA from 1980 to 1995. Well known in the toxicology community, Dourson has served on numerous U.S. government panels and toxicology journal editorial boards. He has also held multiple positions for the American Board of Toxicology, Society of Toxicology, Society for Risk Analysis, and Toxicology Education Foundation. Dourson...

What Defines Us as Professionals in the Field of Risk Analysis?

In a recent issue of Risk Analysis, the then-President of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), Pamela Williams, has some interesting reflections about the risk analysis field. She states that the ability and desire to tackle difficult problems using a risk analytical approach is what uniquely defines us as professionals in the field of risk analysis. The point of departure for her discussion is interviews with the plenary speakers of the 2014 SRA Annual Meeting, who addressed two divisive topics: hydraulic fracking and marijuana use. She points to several themes that invite contributions from the field of risk analysis, including: Has the full spectrum of potential risks and benefits been identified and weighted, and what are the risk tradeoffs or countervailing risks? Inspired by Williams's reflections, and by analyzing the issues raised in the interviews, this article seeks to clarify what our field is really providing. A main conclusion of the article is that it is essential to acknowledge that professionals in the field of risk analysis merely support the tackling of such problems, and that their genuine competence-that which distinguishes them from other professionals-lies in the risk analytical approach itself.

Advancing Risk Analysis for Nanoscale Materials: Report from an International Workshop on the Role of Alternative Testing Strategies for Advancement.

The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) has a history of bringing thought leadership to topics of emerging risk. In September 2014, the SRA Emerging Nanoscale Materials Specialty Group convened an international workshop to examine the use of alternative testing strategies (ATS) for manufactured nanomaterials (NM) from a risk analysis perspective. Experts in NM environmental health and safety, human health, ecotoxicology, regulatory compliance, risk analysis, and ATS evaluated and discussed the state of the science for in vitro and other alternatives to traditional toxicology testing for NM. Based on this review, experts recommended immediate and near-term actions that would advance ATS use in NM risk assessment. Three focal areas-human health, ecological health, and exposure considerations-shaped deliberations about information needs, priorities, and the next steps required to increase confidence in and use of ATS in NM risk assessment. The deliberations revealed that ATS are now being used for screening, and that, in the near term, ATS could be developed for use in read-across or categorization decision making within certain regulatory frameworks. Participants recognized that leadership is required from within the scientific community to address basic challenges, including standardizing materials, protocols, techniques and reporting, and designing experiments relevant to real-world conditions, as well as coordination and sharing of large-scale collaborations and data. Experts agreed that it will be critical to include experimental parameters that can support the development of adverse outcome pathways. Numerous other insightful ideas for investment in ATS emerged throughout the discussions and are further highlighted in this article.

Short History of Risk Communication in Japan

The notion of risk was introduced in Japanese academia in the 1970s. Following this initial period of interest, the Society for Risk Analysis, Japan, was launched in 1988, coinciding with the first study of “risk communication.” However, the concept was not widely embraced by the public at that time. This situation changed after the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and risk communication gradually came to be acknowledged in Japanese society. Following the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant incident ofMarch 11, 2011, a boom in risk communication occurred due to anxieties among residents about the possibility of low-level radiation exposure. Regrettably, however, the government’s risk communication system did not work well, and consequently, the general public did not know who or what to believe. Underlying this confusion, we can observe the differences between the “risk cultures” of Japan and the West. Thus, it remains to be seen in what manner Japanese people will come to accept risk communication.

About the Authors

About the Authors

Researches at the Society for Risk Analysis, Japan

Researches at the Society for Risk Analysis, Japan