Risk Analysis: Celebrating the Accomplishments and Embracing Ongoing Challenges

As part of the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis and Risk Analysis: An International Journal, this essay reviews the 10 most important accomplishments of risk analysis from 1980 to 2010, outlines major accomplishments in three major categories from 2011 to 2019, discusses how editors circulate authors’ accomplishments, and proposes 10 major risk-related challenges for 2020–2030. Authors conclude that the next decade will severely test the field of risk analysis.     

A simple procedure for the selection of significant effects

Summary.  Given a large number of test statistics, a small proportion of which represent departures from the relevant null hypothesis, a simple rule is given for choosing those statistics that are indicative of departure. It is based on fitting by moments a mixture model to the set of test statistics and then deriving an estimated likelihood ratio. Simulation suggests that the procedure has good properties when the departure from an overall null hypothesis is not too small.     

Analyse biographique du travail féminin

Cet article montre comment l'application d'une méthode d'analyse biographique d'interaction à un domaine où l'interaction paraît évidente — activité féminine et fécondite — ouvre des perspectives nouvelles. En effet, les limites qui apparaissent lors de cette analyse conduisent les auteurs à conclure que ce n'est pas en raffinant les méthodes mais plutôt la collecte que l'on parviendra à progresser dans ce domaine. Le problème des interactions de l'activité et de la fécondité semble mal posé avant même le recours à la méthode. Cela justifie la nécessité de saisir le travail féminin comme concept unifié ne dissociant pas la sphère domestique et la sphère rémunérée. Cela conduit les auteurs à dégager quelques principes de collecte mieux adaptés aux préoccupations récentes dans ce domaine: des données biographiques sur le travail féminin. L'interaction collectée à sa source se prêterait alors à une analyse biographique plus révélatrice que celle qui confronte deux processus sans en évaluer les modalités changeantes.This article demonstrates how life event history analysis applied to the interaction between fertility and female economic activity can lead to new perspectives in the analysis of this complicated relationship. The authors identify limits to the analysis of the interaction given the anticipatory nature of behaviour. They conclude that progress in this field requires not the refinement of methods but rather a fundamental change in the approach to the data collected. If fertility and employment are considered separately, a problem is created even before the methods of analysis are applied. They recommend a conception of women's work as a whole, a conception that does not dissociate domestic and paid work. The authors go on to identify ways of improving the relevance of data collection to contemporary issues in the life history analysis of women's work. They argue that data on the interaction, collected at its source, would yield a more revealing life history than that which sees domestic work and paid work as separate spheres, and fails to take account of changes in their relationship.     

Communication of risk: health hazards from mobile phones

Summary. Possible health hazards from mobile phones arise from the use of the phones themselves and via the base stations that relay signals. Except for an increase in traffic accidents induced by the use of mobile phones in cars the evidence for a health hazard is at most indirect, but it cannot be entirely dismissed; the phones have not been widely used for sufficiently long for direct epidemiological studies to have high sensitivity for detecting any induced incidence of cancer, for example. The background and evidence are briefly reviewed and the steps taken in the UK to make information widely available described.     

A Quantitative Assessment of the Risks from Illegally Imported Meat Contaminated with Foot and Mouth Disease Virus to Great Britain

Foot and mouth disease (FMD) is considered by many as the most important animal disease in the world. FMD is highly contagious and outbreaks incur significant costs as affected countries are severely limited in their ability to trade. A number of trade commodities may be contaminated with FMD virus (FMDV) including animal products, for example, meat. As a member of the European Union, Great Britain (GB) has put in place a number of regulations to prevent the importation of pathogens in imported meat products. However, the illegal importation of meat provides a route by which safety controls may be circumvented and meat from FMD affected areas may be imported. This study assesses the FMD infection risk posed to the livestock population of GB from the illegal importation of meat, and estimates the major contributors to this overall risk, through the development of a quantitative risk assessment model. From model results, the total amount of illegal meat entering GB each year is estimated on average to be 11,875 tonnes. with 90% certainty that this is between 4,398 and 28,626 tonnes per year; of which between 64.5 and 565 kg are contaminated with FMDV. This flow of illegal meat results in an estimate of a frequency of FMD infection in GB livestock of 0.015 cases of infected animals per year, with 90% certainty it is between 0.0017 and 0.053. Imports from the region Near and Middle East account for 47% of this risk, and 68% of the risk is attributed to bone-in and dried de-boned products.     

Non-collegial simple games and the nowhere denseness of the set of preference profiles having a core

In recent papers, somewhat conflicting results on the generic emptiness of the core have been proven. Rubinstein (1979) has shown that the core is generically empty in the Kannai topology even without a restriction on the dimensionality of the alternative space. Schofield (1980) finds the core generically empty in the Whitney-C topology, but requires a dimensionality condition. This note explores the apparent conflict by proving a generalization of Rubinstein's result for the Whitney-C ⁰ topology, and showing that the result does not extend to the Whitney-C ¹ topology without a dimensionality condition.I would like to thank Kim Border and Richard McKelvey for their helpful discussion and comments. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant no. SES 78-2478781     

A Macro-Economic Framework for Evaluation of Cyber Security Risks Related to Protection of Intellectual Property

The article is based on the premise that, from a macro-economic viewpoint, cyber attacks with long-lasting effects are the most economically significant, and as a result require more attention than attacks with short-lasting effects that have historically been more represented in literature. In particular, the article deals with evaluation of cyber security risks related to one type of attack with long-lasting effects, namely, theft of intellectual property (IP) by foreign perpetrators. An International Consequence Analysis Framework is presented to determine (1) the potential macro-economic consequences of cyber attacks that result in stolen IP from companies in the United States, and (2) the likely sources of such attacks. The framework presented focuses on IP theft that enables foreign companies to make economic gains that would have otherwise benefited the U.S. economy. Initial results are presented.