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.     

The value of being precise

This study investigates how individuals assess imprecise information. We focus on two essential dimensions of decision under uncertainty, outcomes and probabilities, and their respective precision. We believe the precision of information is highly relevant in the investment setting, as reflected in the well-known “home (familiarity) bias”, and the outcome and probability dimensions, separately or jointly, may affect investors’ knowledge of uncertainty and perceived risk of the investment options, and subsequently affect investors’ choices. To test this conjecture, we conducted three experiments. Our results show that 1) participants demonstrate a pattern of preference for precision and aversion of extreme vagueness and associate vagueness with higher perceived risk and lower investment (experiments one and two); 2) participants prefer vague outcome information to vague probability information (experiment two); 3) familiarity indeed positively affects the precision of estimated values, but this association is stronger for the outcome dimension than for probabilities (experiment three). Our results confirm that precision in information, especially in the outcome dimension has an impact on investors’ resource allocation choices.     

冷战后的中美政治安全关系

冷战结束十年以来 ,美国的对华政策依然摇摆不定。之所以如此 ,是因为十年来美国视中国为敌还是为友 ,或者非敌非友 ,至今还未定性。而美国难于在其国际政治安全战略中给中国定性的原因 ,则与以下的三个层次密切相关 ,即美国的国内政治层次、中美关系的发展层次和全球层次。     

浅析电子商务中的信息安全风险评估

本文结合电子商务自身特点,从对信息资产风险对象的确定、风险评估方法选择、评估的具体指标评价和结果的分析后,确定信息资产的风险控制策略。同时从投入与收益的比较选择中,简单分析控制措施选择与成本预算方面的关系。     

谈激发大学生政治理论课的学习兴趣

政治理论课是大学生必修的一门课程,它不仅向学生讲授马克思主义的理论知识,还要帮助学生树立科学的世界观、人生观和价值观。政治理论课的教学质量如何,不仅影响到每个学生的未来,而且关系到国家的前途。所以我们要大力改进课堂教学,用教学的高质量来培养学生的高素质。如今大学生普遍不喜欢上政治理论课,极大地影响该课程的教学效果,更难以实现政治理论课的智育和德育双重功能。我们认为,针对目前大学政治理论课的低效性现状,可以通过激发学生的学习兴趣来提高政治理论课的教学效果。     

Chemical risk communication through the Internet in Spain

In this work, some corporate websites of the chemical industry of Tarragona (Spain) are studied, analysing how the chemical trade associations and companies present information and/or encourage dialogue with the community on issues relating to the chemical risk and their environmental, health and safety (EHS) performance. The results suggest that the chemical industry in Tarragona uses the corporate websites mainly to disseminate information about its EHS commitments and performance, but they do not encourage dialogue with the community through the Internet.     

A modified random-effect procedure for combining risk difference in sets of 2×2 tables from clinical trials

Summary Meta-analyses of sets of clinical trials often combine risk differences from several 2×2 tables according to a random-effects model. The DerSimonian-Laird random-effects procedure, widely used for estimating the populaton mean risk difference, weights the risk difference from each primary study inversely proportional to an estimate of its variance (the sum of the between-study variance and the conditional within-study variance). Because those weights are not independent of the risk differences, however, the procedure sometimes exhibits bias and unnatural behavior. The present paper proposes a modified weighting scheme that uses the unconditional within-study variance to avoid this source of bias. The modified procedure has variance closer to that available from weighting by ideal weights when such weights are known. We studied the modified procedure in extensive simulation experiments using situations whose parameters resemble those of actual studies in medical research. For comparison we also included two unbiased procedures, the unweighted mean and a sample-size-weighted mean; their relative variability depends on the extent of heterogeneity among the primary studies. An example illustrates the application of the procedures to actual data and the differences among the results. This research was supported by Grant HS 05936 from the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research to Harvard University.     

国家权力与城市空间:当代中国城市基层社会治理变革

确立和调整城市治理的空间策略是现代国家的重要任务。改革前中国的单位体制,使国家能够依靠单位实现“单元分隔”式的治理模式。改革以来,这种整齐划一的空间战略无法适应新的城市社会变迁。在城市社区管理体制改革中,出现了三种不同的国家空间战略,即“政党国家”,“行政国家”和“社会化国家”模式。当前城市社区改革的困难和复杂性体现了以上三种空间战略的对立和冲突。     

Statistics for weighing benefits and harms in a proposed genetic substudy of a randomized cancer prevention trial

Summary.  When evaluating potential interventions for cancer prevention, it is necessary to compare benefits and harms. With new study designs, new statistical approaches may be needed to facilitate this comparison. A case in point arose in a proposed genetic substudy of a randomized trial of tamoxifen versus placebo in asymptomatic women who were at high risk for breast cancer. Although the randomized trial showed that tamoxifen substantially reduced the risk of breast cancer, the harms from tamoxifen were serious and some were life threaten-ing. In hopes of finding a subset of women with inherited risk genes who derive greater bene-fits from tamoxifen, we proposed a nested case–control study to test some trial subjects for various genes and new statistical methods to extrapolate benefits and harms to the general population. An important design question is whether or not the study should target common low penetrance genes. Our calculations show that useful results are only likely with rare high penetrance genes.