ABSTRACT
Risk is a key element in understanding and managing safety. People’s perception of the riskiness of social and technological hazards can be understood in terms of the hazard’s key characteristics such as whether it evokes dread and fear of catastrophic potential. Individuals also differ in terms of their willingness to tolerate risks. Risk perception and risk tolerance vary between individuals and between cultural and social groups. In both cases, an affective or emotional component has been shown to be important. Adaptation and the maintenance of a constant level of risk have been proposed as an important factor in determining the effectiveness of safety interventions. The need to estimate the risks associated with new designs or activities has led to the quantitative field of risk assessment, including somewhat controversial attempts to quantify assessments of human reliability. The chapter also reviews the common practice of constructing risk matrices to prioritise safety interventions towards areas of greatest significance. These often form part of safety management systems which are now often mandatory in many industries from aviation to construction. Evidence for the effectiveness of these programmes is reviewed.
