Building on the assumption that there is, indeed, no such thing as a perfect model of risk, this study will first provide a manifold explanation for that matter.
Subsequently, while assuming the possible existence of such a perfect model of risk, it will question its value as regards to the politicization of modern societies, before ultimately recommending some guidelines to improve the current risk assessment methods, the further elaboration of which could undoubtedly contribute to offset some of the current risk modelling methods' shortages.
The impossibility of establishing a perfect model of risk is closely linked to inherent characteristics of the notion of risk itself.
Since risk avoidance became one of our modern society's biggest preoccupations, the notion of risk has been scrutinized by a significant number of academics, whose primary goal was to find an "analytical fix" to the risk issue.
Soon enough, while scholars realized that there was no clear definition of risk, the idea of establishing a perfect model of risk became a challenge. One of the peculiarities of the notion lays indeed on the fact that it is likely to be interpreted in numerous ways.
[...] “We will never have a perfect model of risk ” Alan Greenspan Is there a perfect model of risk? Building on the assumption that there is, indeed, no such thing as a perfect model of risk, this study will first provide a manifold explanation for that matter. Subsequently, while assuming the possible existence of such a perfect model of risk, it will question its value as regards to the politicization of modern societies, before ultimately recommending some guidelines to improve the current risk assessment methods, the further elaboration of which could undoubtedly contribute to offset some of the current risk modelling methods' shortages Indeed, We will never have a perfect model of risk There is no clear definition of risk The impossibility of establishing a perfect model of risk is closely linked to inherent characteristics of the notion of risk itself. [...]
[...] In other words, the main prerequisite the improvement of risk assessment's methods should meet is the further development of public involvement. Taking up such a challenge requires to preliminary break the so-called “inertia in risk policy circles”; a notion that critically points out the excessive attention “devoted to classifying different public perspectives, rather than to soliciting genuinely active public involvement in decision making”[13]. Indeed, a risk assessment method, which requests public participation may be of great added value, especially in terms of credibility gains toward the public. [...]
[...] Accordingly, academics in line with this assessment detailed several dimensions of risk such as: “their severity (e.g. the balance of morbidity to mortality); their immediacy (e.g. injury versus disease), their duration, reversibility, familiarity or controllability, their geographic or demographic distribution and their ‘gravity' (whether they are concentrated in single serious episodes or spread over a number of relatively minor events)”[3]. The accuracy of those scholars laying the emphasis on their incapacity to appoint any level of significance to any of the dimensions of risk they distinguished[4] is quite telling about the way this multifaceted notion is currently perceived. [...]
[...] Greenspan, Alan, “We will never have a perfect model of risk”, Ft.com, 16th March 2008 [online edition]. Greenspan, Alan, “We need a better cushion against risk”, Ft.com March 2009 [online edition]. Luhmann. Niklas, Risk – A Sociological Theory, New Brunswick and London, Aldine Transaction Nassim Nicholas, Taleb, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable”, NY Times April 2007, retrieved 1 April 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/bookschapters/0422-1st-tale.html?_r=1. Stirling, Andrew, “Risk at a turning point?”, Journal of Risk Research, vol no pp. 97-109. [...]
[...] “It is possible to take different but equally reasonable views on the relative importance of the different dimensions”. Stirling, Andrew, “Risk at a turning point?”, Journal of Risk Research, vol no p Stirling, op. cit., p All the considerations about the “first” and “second modernity” as well as the analysis of those two notions are developed by Ulrich Beck. Beck, Ulrich, World Risk Society, Cambridge, Polity Press chapters 1. Greenspan, Alan, “We will never have a perfect model of risk”, p Greenspan, loc. [...]
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