Climate change is a game changer and our disaster response is no longer sufficient. We must begin to address the underlying causes that make some communities more vulnerable than others.
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Articles on Risk assessment
Displaying 1 - 20 of 32 articles
Rising concern about possible environmental damage from the active ingredients in sunscreens could have ripple effects on public health if it causes people to use less of them.
Telling people they have a flood risk rating of 10 is less powerful than explaining how much they’re likely to pay to deal with flooding over the next five years.
After years of gridlock, Congress passed significant gun control legislation for the first time in the last 30 years.
People want a simple answer. Is this action safe? But despite Anthony Fauci bouncing responsibility for COVID-19 risk assessment to individuals, your risk can’t be boiled down to one probability.
Policymakers, industry regulators and investors must team up to mandate that corporations provide CEOs with financial compensation for reducing carbon footprints.
Non-invasive prenatal testing can assess risk for genetic anomalies in a fetus. But interpreting risk levels is highly personal, as a study on Reddit discussions shows.
Critical thinking means seeking out new information – especially facts that might run contrary to what you believe – and being willing to change your mind. And it’s a teachable skill.
Private companies rate all kinds of investments, from stocks to used cars. Now, they’re starting to analyze climate risks to local real estate – but how reliable are their findings?
How you respond to a risk depends on how you weigh the costs and benefits of an action. The problem is you’re not just a logical computer, and emotions bias your interpretation of the facts.
Flood plain statistics can be confusing. There are better ways to think about the risk of severe weather than 100-year storm or flood.
One of the lessons we must take from the Whakaari tragedy is the cumulative nature of risk. Repeated visits to the volcanic island by tour guides placed them near unacceptable risk limits.
A sustainable private health insurance system requires enough young, healthy people paying premiums and not making claims. But government policies haven’t achieved this. Here’s what to try instead.
Release of GM mosquitoes in Florida is imminent. But a multidisciplinary team of scientists believe that more studies are needed first. They encourage a publicly accessible registry for GM organisms.
The danger of treating COVID-19 as an astronomically rare and improbable event is that we will treat it as such and fail to prepare for the next pandemic. And there will be another pandemic.
Human beings have difficulty assessing distant threats.
The tragedy at Whakaari/White Island highlights the need for consent forms to ensure tourists are fully informed when choosing to visit dangerous locations.
Putting more people in prison is not the answer to reducing crime. New fair and bias free assessment tools may help.
An economics risk analysis offers some insight into the modern anti-vaxx movement.
We can’t say that Katla in Iceland is ‘due’ to erupt, no matter what you have read.
Top contributors
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Research professor, RMIT University
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Senior Research Fellow, Cancer Council Queensland
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Senior lecturer, University of Tasmania
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Scientific Secretary, GenØk - Centre for Biosafety
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Stephen Duckett is a Friend of The Conversation.
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice, The University of Melbourne
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Associate Professor, Social Innovation, CQUniversity Australia
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Assistant Director (International) - Melbourne Centre for Cities, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Law, La Trobe University
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Public health doctor and Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Fellow, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
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PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney
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Professor of Responsible Innovation, Arizona State University
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Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk, University of Cambridge
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Professor of Tourism, University of Otago
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Professor of Biology and Director, Kewalo Marine Laboratory, University of Hawaii
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Clinical associate professor, Boston University
