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.     

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。     

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.     

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.     

女人—妻子—母亲:新时期谢晋电影的经典表述

谢晋在新时期的最先动作是把 (女 )英雄 (女 )战士塑造成性别意义上的女性 ;在家庭中她们以“落难”男性的伴侣和精神上的母亲的双重身份承担着拯救功能 ;而生儿育女则是对家庭的另一种方式的拯救     

模糊语言的独特功能

本文对模糊语言的独特功能从日常生活、文学作品、科学医学三方面进行了探讨 ,从而阐明在自然语言中 ,模糊语言是绝对的、普遍的。语言的模糊性缘于客观事物本身的模糊性及人们对客观世界认识的不确定性。     

试析高校院系资料室的隐性功能

信息时代中 ,由于网络在查找资料上的方便与快捷 ,已经对当前高校的院系资料室形成较大的冲击 ,资料室存在的合理性因此受到质疑。然而 ,笔者认为网络可以取代的只是资料室的显性功能 ,而资料室本身所具有的隐性功能则是网络所无法替代的。本文主要以资料室的隐性功能的阐释为出发点 ,认为环境与交往是资料室隐性功能发挥的重要机制 ,进而剖析高校院系资料室隐性功能的具体体现     

国外生态税实践及其对我国可持续发展建设的启示

初步探讨了生态税在可持续发展中的作用,认为对于正在实施可持续发展战略的中国来说,课征生态税是实现这个战略的重要手段。