This book grew out of the conviction that the preparation and management of large-scale technological projects can be substantially improved. We have witnessed the often unhappy course of societal and political decision making concerning projects such as hazardous chemical installations, novel types of electric power plant or storage sites for solid wastes. This has led us to believe that probabilistic risk analysis, technical reliability analysis and environm,ental impact analysis are necessary but insufficient for making acceptable, and justifiable, social decisions about such projects. There is more to socio-technical decision making than applying acceptance rules based on neglige ably low accident probabilities or on maximum credible accidents. Consideration must also be given to psychological, social and political issues and methods of decision making. Our conviction initially gave rise to an international experts' workshop titled 'Social decision methodology for technological projects' (SDMTP) and held in May 1986 at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, at a time when Cvetkovich spent a sabbatical there. The work shop - aimed at surveying the issues and listing the methods to address them - was the first part of an effort whose second part was directed at the production of this volume. Plans called for the book to deal systematically with the main problems of socio-technical decision making; it was to list a number of useful approaches and methods; and it was to present a number of integrative conclusions and recommendations for both policy makers and methodologists.

This book focuses on negotiation processes and how negotiation modeling frameworks and information technology can support these. A modeling framework for negotiation as a purposeful complex adaptive process is presented and computer-implemented in the first three chapters. Two game-theoretic contributions use non-cooperative games in extensive form and a computer-implemented graph model for conflict resolution, respectively. Two chapters use the negotiators' joint utility distribution to provide problem structure and computer support. A chapter on cognitive support uses restructurable modeling as a framework. One chapter matches information technologies with negotiation tasks. Another develops computer support based on preference programming. Two final chapters develop a stakeholder approach to support system evaluation, and a research framework for them, respectively. Negotiation Processes: Modeling Frameworks and Information Technology will be of interest to researchers and students in the areas of negotiation, group decision/negotiation support systems and management science, as well as to practising negotiators interested in this technology.

Environmental hazards do not respect international boundaries. In this volume, distinguished international researchers make a significant contribution to the understanding and management of transboundary environmental risks. The transboundary risk topics addressed highlight the key political, economic, social and cultural issues of our times, such as how transboundary risks are constructed, how they are communicated within and between countries, how the authorities can build trust in political management processes, and what forms of democratic risk management institutions are appropriate. Useful practical lessons on the management of transboundary risk at the national and international levels are drawn from the case studies. The volume provides valuable evidence and analysis for those working on international environmental issues and all aspects of risk management.

This new book views risk analysis as one important basis for informed debate, policy decisions and governance regarding risk issues within societies. Its twelve chapters provide interdisciplinary insights about the fundamental issues in risk analysis for the beginning of a new century. The chapter authors are some of the leading researchers in the broad fields that provide the basis for the risk analysis, including the social, natural, medical, engineering and physical sciences. They address a wide range of issues, including: new perspectives on uncertainty and variability analysis, exposure analysis and the role of precaution, environmental risk and justice, risk valuation and citizen involvement, extreme events, the role of efficiency in risk management, and the assessment and governance of transboundary and global risks. The book will be used as a starting point for discussions at the 2003 First World Congress on Risk, to be held in Brussels.

The establishment of the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) was the direct result of widespread concern that the complexity and interdependence of health, environmental, and technological risks facing the world was making the development and implementation of adequate risk governance strategies ever more difficult. This volume details the IRGC developed and proposed framework for risk governance and covers how it was peer reviewed as well as tested

Risk Governance is a tour de force. Every risk manager, every risk analyst, every risk researcher must read this book - it is the demarcation point for all further advances in risk policy and risk research. Renn provides authoritative guidance on how to manage risks based on a definitive synthesis of the research literature. The skill with which he builds practical recommendations from solid science is unprecedented. Thomas Dietz, Director, Environmental Science and Policy Program, Michigan State University, USA A masterpiece of new knowledge and wisdom with illustrative examples of tested applications to realworld cases. The book is recommendable also to interested students in different disciplines as a timely textbook on 'risk beyond risk'. Norio Okada, Full Professor and Director at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan There are classic environmental works such as The Tragedy of the Commons by Hardin, Risk Society by Beck, The Theory of Communicative Action by Habermas, and the seminal volumes by Ostrom on governing the commons. Renns book fits right into this series of important milestones of environmental studies. Jochen Jaeger, Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada Risk Governance provides a valuable survey of the whole field of risk and demonstrates how scientific, economic, political and civil society actors can participate in inclusive risk governance. Jobst Conrad, Senior Scientist, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany Renn offers a remarkably fair-minded and systematic approach to bringing together the diverse fields that have something to say about 'risk'. Risk Governance moves us along the path from the noisy, formative stage of thinking about risk to one with a stronger empirical, theoretical, and analytical foundation. Baruch Fischhoff, PhD, Howard Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA 'I cannot describe how impressed I am at the breadth and coherence of Renn's career's work! Written with remarkable clarity and minimal technical jargon... [this] should be required reading in risk courses!' John Graham, former director of the Harvard Risk Center and former deputy director of the Office of Budget and Management of the Unites States Administration This book, for the first time, brings together and updates the groundbreaking work of renowned risk theorist and researcher Ortwin Renn, integrating the major disciplinary concepts of risk in the social, engineering and natural sciences. The book opens with the context of risk handling before flowing through the core topics of assessment, evaluation, perception, management and communication, culminating in a look at the transition from risk management to risk governance and a glimpse at a new understanding of risk in (post)modern societies.