Improving Risk Analysis discusses and illustrates practical methods for assessing, communicating, and managing uncertain risks when the probabilities of consequences caused by alternative actions cannot be quantified with useful confidence, accuracy, and precision. This monograph demonstrates how to avoid these pitfalls by using improved techniques of risk analysis. Through these improved techniques of risk analysis, readers will better understand uncertain risks and be able to make more effective decisions about how to manage them.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts 1 and 2 explore the key principles on how high-quality risk analysis can greatly improve the clarity and effectiveness of decisions when the consequences of different choices are uncertain. Part 3 shows in greater detail how these introduced methods can be applied to health effects of air pollution, with emphasis on understanding and modeling causal relations between exposures and responses based on realistically limited and imperfect data. Throughout the book, real-world examples and case studies drawn from health, safety, environmental, and terrorism risk analysis are used and illustrate the practical application of techniques for improving risk analysis.

Klappentext

Improving Risk Analysis discusses and illustrates practical methods for assessing, communicating, and managing uncertain risks when the probabilities of consequences caused by alternative actions cannot be quantified with useful confidence, accuracy, and precision. This monograph demonstrates how to avoid these pitfalls by using improved techniques of risk analysis. Through these improved techniques of risk analysis, readers will better understand uncertain risks and be able to make more effective decisions about how to manage them.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts 1 and 2 explore the key principles on how high-quality risk analysis can greatly improve the clarity and effectiveness of decisions when the consequences of different choices are uncertain. Part 3 shows in greater detail how these introduced methods can be applied to health effects of air pollution, with emphasis on understanding and modeling causal relations between exposures and responses based on realistically limited and imperfect data. Throughout the book, real-world examples and case studies drawn from health, safety, environmental, and terrorism risk analysis are used and illustrate the practical application of techniques for improving risk analysis.

Zusammenfassung

Improving Risk Analysis shows how to better assess and manage uncertain risks when the consequences of alternative actions are in doubt. The constructive methods of causal analysis and risk modeling presented in this monograph will enable to better understand uncertain risks and decide how to manage them.

The book is divided into three parts. Parts 1 shows how high-quality risk analysis can improve the clarity and effectiveness of individual, community, and enterprise decisions when the consequences of different choices are uncertain. Part 2 discusses social decisions. Part 3 illustrates these methods and models, showing how to apply them to health effects of particulate air pollution.

"Tony Cox's new book addresses what risk analysts and policy makers most need to know: How to find out what causes what, and how to quantify the practical differences that changes in risk management practices would make. The constructive methods in Improving Risk Analysis will be invaluable in helping practitioners to deliver more useful insights to inform high-stakes decisions and policy,in areas ranging from disaster planning to counter-terrorism investments to enterprise risk management to air pollution abatement policies. Better risk management is possible and practicable; Improving Risk Analysis explains how."
Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, Stanford University

"Improving Risk Analysis offers crucial advice for moving policy-relevant risk analyses towards more defensible, causally-based methods. Tony Cox draws on his extensive experience to offer sound advice and insights that will be invaluable to both policy makers and analysts in strengthening the foundations for important risk analyses. This much-needed book should be required reading for policy makers and policy analysts confronting uncertain risks and seeking more trustworthy risk analyses."
Seth Guikema, Johns Hopkins University

"TonyCox has been a trail blazer in quantitative risk analysis, and his new book gives readers the knowledge and tools needed to cut through the complexity and advocacy inherent in risk analysis. Cox's careful exposition is detailed and thorough, yet accessible to non-technical readers interested in understanding uncertain risks and the outcomes associated with different mitigation actions. Improving Risk Analysis should be required reading for public officials responsible for making policy decisions about how best to protect public health and safety in an uncertain world."
Susan E. Dudley, George Washington University

Inhalt
Causality for Risk Analysts: Improving Our Understanding of How the World Works.- Improving Individual Risk Management Decisions: Learning from Experience and Coping with Model Uncertainty.- Improving Community Risk Management: Managing Disaster Risks.- Improving Organizational Risk Management.- Improving Defense Against Intelligent Adversaries.- Managing Real and Percieved Risks: Animal Antibiotics and Drug-Resistant Infections.- Rethinking the Health Benefits fo Air Pollution Control.- Air Pollution and Health Risk Inequality.- A Causal Model of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).- Exposure-Response Thresholds for Lung Disease.- An Exposure-Response Threshold for Lung Diseases and Lung Cancer Caused by Crystalline Silica.- Nonlinear Effects of Smoking on Coronary Heart Disease Risk.- Do Cold Weather and Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution Cause Early Deaths in the Elderly?.- Conclusions and Recommendations: What Have We Learned?.