Explaining Risk Analysis

by Michael R Greenberg (Author)

Risk analysis is not a narrowly defined set of applications. Rather, it is widely used to assess and manage a plethora of hazards that threaten dire implications. However, too few people actually understand what risk analysis can help us accomplish and, even among experts, knowledge is often limited to one or two applications.

Explaining Risk Analysis frames risk analysis as a holistic planning process aimed at making better risk-informed decisions and emphasizing the connections between the parts. This framework requires an understanding of basic terms, including explanations of why there is no universal agreement about what risk means, much less risk assessment, risk management and risk analysis. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, the book illustrates the ways in which risk analysis can help lead to better decisions in a variety of scenarios, including the destruction of chemical weapons, management of nuclear waste and the response to passenger rail threats. The book demonstrates how the risk analysis process and the data, models and processes used in risk analysis will clarify, rather than obfuscate, decision-makers’ options.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of risk assessment, risk management, public health, environmental science, environmental economics and environmental psychology.

Review
"Michael Greenberg’s masterpiece book Explaining Risk Analysis is written in coherent terms, while guided by the Gestalt-holistic thinking. This combination makes the richness and complexity of risk analysis comprehensive to a broad readership. It is a gift to all of us―students, practitioners and scholars–in this ever-challenging and expanding field." – Yacov Haimes, Lawrence Quarles Professor of Engineering, University of Virginia, former President of the Society for Risk Analysis, USA

"Michael Greenberg, one of the world’s foremost risk analysis scholars, authors, and practitioners, has written a delightful, thoroughly engaging and accessible introduction to the field of risk analysis, showing how it works, why it matters, and how individuals, organizations, and governments can apply risk assessment and risk management to make the world a better place. The tools introduced and vividly illustrated here with compelling case studies can help to make sense of, and to resolve with sanity and insight, some of the most contentious debates of our time. These include discussions of environmental justice, land use, climate change, responses to terrorism and saner and more effective individual, organizational, and governmental planning under risk and uncertainty. This lucid and fun exposition will benefit not only students, teachers, and practitioners of risk analysis, but also policy analysts and decision-makers who want to manage risks, uncertainties, complexities, and conflicts more effectively." – Tony Cox, Editor-in-Chief of Risk Analysis: An International Journal, and University of Colorado, USA

About the Author
Michael R. Greenberg is Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean of the Faculty at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, USA.