Relating Government, Community, and Individual Interests in Risk Identification and Assessment

Abstract

Risk analysis consists of risk identification and assessment. Risk assessment combines laboratory and field data with mathematical models, assumptions, and judgments to estimate the likelihood and consequences of human and ecological risks. In its ideal form, risk assessment can be seen as a multi-disciplinary decision-making tool that allows policy-makers to make informed judgments concerning the nature of the hazard inherent within a given activity. Risk assessment is the first step in environmental risk analysis, a tool designed to assist decision makers in making environmental policy decisions. The classic model for risk assessment was first set out in the United States in a 1983 report, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process, developed by the National Research Council Committee on Institutional Means for Assessment of Risks to Public Health. The Hazard Mitigation System established and implemented a series of measures to different markets guarantee minimal risk of introducing a particular pest, control protocols by the presence of pests in plant products to be introduced to certain regions.

Relating Government, Community, and Individual Interests in Risk Identification and Assessment

Risk analysis consists of risk identification and assessment. Risk assessment combines laboratory and field data with mathematical models, assumptions, and judgments to estimate the likelihood and consequences of human and ecological risks. Risk management uses legal, economic, political, communication, and other social instruments to reduce risk and help those affected to recover from harmful events. Personal, indoor, and outdoor environments contain obvious hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, oil tankers, landfills, and industrial facilities and less apparent ones such as tobacco products, alcohol, drugs, contaminated food, stairs, and slippery sidewalks. Risk identification and assessment is a set of formal processes to estimate the likelihood of danger associated with hazards. Typically, the process is divided into four steps: (1) hazard identification, (2) dose-response assessment, (3) exposure assessment, and (4) risk characterization.

In its ideal form, risk assessment can be seen as a multi-disciplinary decision-making tool that allows policy-makers to make informed judgements concerning the nature of the hazard inherent within a given activity. Risk assessment is a broad term that includes the process of risk analysis (concerned with the identification and quantification of risk) and the process of risk acceptability and management. There are often inherent tensions between these two elements of risk assessment and this, ultimately, centres on the relationship between scientific and public expertise and the legitimacy of knowledge.

Figure 1 shows the main components of the process of risk analysis.

Rowe's categorization of risk assessment: risk analysis

Source: adapted from Rowe, 1977

1) Explain how (and why) government's public safety institutions, private business, and communities (aka “the public) are often mutually dependent on one another in the identification and assessment of risk. In what way[s] can a failure of RIA systems adversely affect all three stakeholders? Illustrate, using a practical example (other than any of those already discussed elsewhere in the course).

Risk Identification

Is a substance or activity a hazard? Information comes from laboratory experiments that use bacteria, ...