Risk is something that concerns us all.
Risk has become an integrated part of decision making and it is acknowledged that decisions should be informed by risks. This means that a decision maker may take other things than risk into account.
Even though society efficiently are managing risks, we are now more often facing risks that are new, tricky or complex.
New global challenges or new technology create phenomena for which we have little experience or limited understanding.
Managing the most easy and obvious problems first has left decision makers with the most tricky risks to regulate.
More inter-dependencies between different societal or natural systems is challenging for the detection and control of adverse system behavior.
The new, tricky and complex results in that the risks we face today are more uncertain than before. The classical view on risk as probability * consequences is challenged by
- the need to consider risks of different types and
- the need to face uncertainty of different levels of severity.
To combat the problem for risk assessors and decision makers of today, the Society for Risk Analysis have produced a glossary presenting a broader view on risk. The glossary make a clear distinction between risk as a concept and how we choose to measure it.
Further, the SRA glossary emphasis that the quantity and quality of available knowledge should guide how we choose to describe uncertainty. This means that uncertainty are treated even though our knowledge is too weak to support uncertainty being quantified by probabilities.
It remains to see if a broader view on risk can be of help to risk assessors and decision makers. I find that it may close the gap between risk-informed and evidence-based decision making. It is more important than ever that education and training of new assessors and decision makers get exposed to the ongoing advancement of the science of risk analysis.
So, take the opportunity to revise your view on risk. Perhaps you like it : )
/Ullrika