Public attention has focused in recent years on an array of
technological risks to health, safety, and the environment. At the same
time, responsibilities for technological risk as- sessment, evaluation,
and management have grown in both the public and private sectors because
of a perceived need to anticipate, prevent, or reduce the risks inherent
in modem society. In attempting to meet these responsibilities,
legislative, judicial, regulatory, and private sector institutions have
had to deal with the extraordinarily complex problems of assessing and
balancing risks, costs, and benefits. The need to help society cope with
technological risks has given rise to a new intellectual endeavor: the
social and behavioral study of issues in risk evaluation and risk
management. The scope and complexity of these analyses require a high
degree of cooperative effort on the part of specialists from many
fields. Analyzing social and behavioral issues requires the efforts of
political scientists, sociologists, decision analysts, management
scientists, econ- omists, psychologists, philosophers, and policy
analysts, among others.