Abstract
The concept of the “risk to society” of a given activity or situation is a difficult one. First of all the term “societal risk” is not (and probably cannot be) defined univocally, because it is linked to the society in question, to the historical and technical period under consideration, and to the size of the society in question Similarly the concept of an “accident” needs to be defined. However given our times and an European (western) cultural frame, societal risk is often defined as the risk to the humans in the society, and very often as the risk of having a large segment of the population damaged in some way. On this point, this paper will briefly discuss the options, also for evaluation of environmental and economic damage.
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Haastrup, P. (1998). Issues in Societal Risk of Hazardous Chemicals: The Use of FN Diagrams, Data Reliability and Uncertainty. In: Jorissen, R.E., Stallen, P.J.M. (eds) Quantified Societal Risk and Policy Making. Technology, Risk, and Society, vol 12. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2801-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2801-9_11
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