FOR GEOLOGICAL DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR WASTE Some aspects regarding the reliability of risk assessments for geological disposal of nuclear waste are investigated. The input for the study is given by the opinions of some interviewed Dutch experts and existing literature. The Dutch risk assessment PROSA is used as an example, but the conclusions are seen to be valid more generally. In the PROSA study...

When a crisis occurs, such as a fire in a chemical facility, difficult decisions need to be made based on assessment of risk. Is it safe enough for responders to enter the area? Do we need to evacuate the public from the nearby area? Assessing risks may require information from a number of different sources, as well as collaboration across organizations and management levels. In this paper we p...

In response to the devastation of recent hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, this research identifies small businesses as being at-risk of failing if they experience a data loss caused by a community-wide natural disaster. Practitioner-oriented literature is reviewed to identify relevant disaster recovery components that are classified within a risk management framework. A Delphi study is conducted a...

Risk assessments for natural hazards are becoming more widely used and accepted. Using an extended definition of risk, it becomes obvious that performant procedures for vulnerability assessments are vital for the success of the risk concept. However, there are large gaps in knowledge about vulnerability. To alleviate the situation, a conceptual extension of the scope of existing and new models ...

Surveys concerning environmental and health risks point out the lack of trust of citizens in risk evaluations provided by governments. The aim of this paper is to take into account the impact of this potential distrust on political decisions concerning risk reduction. We prove that lack of trust reduces the attractiveness of risk reduction measures. When heterogeneity in risk exposure and the p...

There are now hundreds of thousands of pathogenicity assertions that relate genetic variation to disease, but most of this clinically utilized variation has no accepted quantitative disease risk estimate. Recent disease-specific studies have used control sequence data to reclassify large amounts of prior pathogenic variation, but there is a critical need to scale up both the pace and feasibilit...

iii ABSTRACT OF THESIS OPTIMISTIC BIAS IN RELATION TO HURRICANE RISK Public officials in the natural disaster field benefit from knowing whether individuals tend to underestimate or overestimate the dangers they could face from future hurricanes. Correcting hurricane risk misperceptions can encourage individuals living in coastal regions to take action and prepare themselves for the next hurric...

Aim Conservation managers are typically faced with limited resources, time and information. The philosophy underlying risk assessment should be robust to these limitations. While there is a broad support for the concept of risk assessments, there is a tendency to rely on expert opinion and exclude formal data analysis, possibly because available information is often scarce. When data analyses a...

Over recent years, a variety of instruments that improve clinicians’ ability to forecast the likelihood that an individual will behave violently have been published. Increasingly, these instruments are being applied in response to laws that require specialized risk assessments. In this article, we present a framework that goes beyond the ‘‘clinical’’ and ‘‘actuarial’’ dichotomy to describe a co...

OBJECTIVE We sought to examine the legal and ethical implications of workplace health risk reduction programs (HRRPs) using health risk assessments, individually focused risk reduction, and financial incentives to promote compliance. METHODS We conducted a literature review, analyzed relevant statutes and regulations, and considered the effects of these programs on employee health privacy. ...