Abstract
In this chapter we shall describe and illustrate a framework for assessing risk in the context of social intervention, where by a social intervention we mean a set of actions undertaken, typically by an organized ensemble of agents external to a given society, in order to solve a problem identified within that society. We focus on the general problem of amalgamating expert risk assessment and lay risk assessment. A methodology for integrating divergent assessments of risk has at least two virtues: (1) Where these are presumed to differ, this methodology forces the normative and descriptive assumptions underlying the assessments into the open, so that they can be examined; and (2) It provides risk policymakers with a tool for systematically prioritizing the normative constraints underlying the assessments of risk. We argue that there is no need either to rationalize or to condemn the systematic gap in risk analyses that exists between experts and laypersons. Rather, experts and laypersons should be understood as having different competencies, capabilities and normative requirements. Public (and private) risk managers need a systematic approach to managing these distinctive capabilities and requirements—an approach that recognizes the strengths and constraints of each analytical group, and which allows risk managers to integrate all of these factors. In this paper, we are interested in identifying and analyzing how technical experts’ risk analyses interact with the lay public’s assessments of risk with the principal goal being first to specify formal representations or models of the divergent assessments of risk generated by experts and the lay public and second, to introduce a model for integrating those assessments. We then apply the model to case studies involving natural disasters and health.
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Notes
- 1.
The rationale for these requirements has to do with the role of these conditions in an expected utility computation, where the target utilities pertain to independent irreducible outcomes; see below.
- 2.
While there is no disputing that risk management and the conflicts between laypersons and experts within that arena are important and warrant continued analyses, we contend that before we can begin to tackle risk management we need a better understanding of how risk assessment conflicts arise and might be mitigated.
- 3.
Although the focus of this paper is driven by considerations of risk assessment and natural hazards, we have included a health example because we believe what is needed is a study of the competing risk assessments between laypersons and experts when natural hazards and health interact. This area of research seems to be a pressing need as we confront ever-increasing numbers of natural hazards and growing problems of climate change. The complexities of examining the interaction of natural hazards and health are beyond the scope of the paper, but we believe that offering a case each of natural hazards and health may provide a starting point for integrating the two. In addition, the complexities of how to resolve competing risk assessments when natural hazards and health interact require its own analysis.
- 4.
However, a problem of circularity for the above criterion arises if the existing situation itself involves violations of fundamental norms. A situation in which fewer of these norms are violated should presumably be considered preferable to the existing state of affairs from a social point of view, but it is not so counted on (N). It must be assumed that the actual situation does not involve violations of fundamental norms. This seems a significant limitation on the application of the suggested criterion.
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McCarthy, T.G., Sugrue, N.M. (2016). Social Choice and the Risks of Intervention. In: Gardoni, P., Murphy, C., Rowell, A. (eds) Risk Analysis of Natural Hazards. Risk, Governance and Society, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22126-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22126-7_2
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