Risk Governance: From Knowledge to Regulatory Action

Risk governance is used to refer to a body of scholarly ideas and concepts for collective decision making involving uncertain consequences of events or actions. The risk governance concept developed by the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva provides guidance for constructing comprehensive assessment and management strategies to cope with risk. Its crafters integrate three types of scientific input: classic, curiosity-driven research; strategic, goal-oriented research: and catalytic, process-related investigations. In this paper, I demonstrate how these three knowledge pools can assist risk assessors and managers to improve their understanding of complex risk situations.