Governing Risk Tolerability

Risk research has conceptualized ‘tolerable risk’ to describe activities considered worthwhile for the value added or the benefits they provide but sufficiently uncertain to require specific measures to diminish and limit their likely adverse consequences. In practice, simple decision heuristics can offer a valuable help; in distinct policy fields – i.e. Nuclear safety, occupational health and safety – formalized tolerability of risk (tor) models have been successfully developed. Tor models tend to combine technical probabilistic estimates about the magnitude and harm of a risk with a societal criterion that integrates the perceptions of the non-experts. In order to achieve a result that is acceptable to society, societal input needs to be carefully organized along a honest two-way non-persuasive dialogue between experts, government and non-experts.keywordsrisk tolerancedistinct policy fieldsimple decision heuristicssocietal critiquesocietal inputthese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.