NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL ASSEMBLY OF BEHAVIORAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D. C. 20418 COMMITTEE ON RISK AND DECISION MAKING (202) 389-6853 COMMITTEE ON RISK AND DECISION MAKING Purpose Recently, a variety of health, safety, and environmental risks have caused widespread concern. These include the: ~~ accident at Three Mile Island, -- grounding of the DC 10's, -- hazards of nuclear wastes -- fierce opposition to the assault on smoking, -- dispute about air bags, -~- Love Canal scandel ~- sharply contested Supreme Court review of OSHA's benzene standard, -- annihilation of the snail darter, -- depletion of the ozone layer, ~- threat of nuclear proliferation, major changes in climate caused by increasing C0, levels. These scattered examples suggest how difficult it is for us, as individ- uals and as a society, to make--and agree on--decisions about health, safe~ ty, and environmental hazards. In this area of policymaking the broad un- certainties, distant ramifications, cruel tradeoffs, and labyrinthine in- stitutional structures make choices among alternative policies especially perplexing. A host of studies have scrutinized specific risks: the National Aca- demy of Sciences alone has published more than a hundred risk assessments in the past decade and thousands of additional studies have been done by research institutions, business organizations, public interest groups, and such governmental agencies as the EPA, NRC, FDA, OSHA, CPSC, FAA, NIH, NHTSA, OTA, and RARG. The National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Risk and Decision Making (CORADM) will undertake a comparative overview of this diverse array of risks and risk assessments. The Committee's synoptic inquiry clearly cannot pro- duce detailed analyses of particular risks; its purpose, rather, will be to gain perspective, a sense of direction, and an ordering of priorities. The primary thrust of CORADM's deliberations will be to: The National Research Council is the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering to serve government and other organizations e adumbrate the elements of an adaptive strategy for structur- ing, comparing, and managing the swarm of risks we face. e@ outline some guidelines for a systematic program of research to support that strategy, and @ suggest some ways to begin implementing the strategy through the development of more credible, more reliable, and more ac- ceptable processes for constructing knowledge, communicating information, and fashioning decisions. CORADM will meet periodically throughout calendar year 1980. Its work Will be divided into three phases. First, the Committee will make specific but preliminary recommendations to the National Science Foundation's Technology and Risk Assessment group concerning criteria for a coherent strategy for research. Second, after surveying the field and soliciting information and view- points from a wide variety of sources, the Committee will make general rec- ommendations about the assessment and management of risk. Finally, in light of these general recommendations, the Committee will re-address and revise its specific recommendations to the National Science Foundation. Members and Staff Dr. Howard Raiffa (CHAIRMAN) Graduate School of Business Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Dr. A. Karim Ahmed Senior Staff Scientist Natural Resources Defense Council Mr. David Cohen President Common Cause Dr. James Coleman Department of Sociology University of Chicago Dr. Robert Kates Graduate School of Geography Clark University Dr. Glenn C. Loury Department of Economics University of Michigan Dr. Charles E. Lindblom Director Institute for Social and Policy Studies Yale University Dr. Roy Radner Economist and Statistician Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. Mr. William Ruckelshaus Dr. Amos Tversky Senior Vice President Department of Psychology Weyerhauser Corporation Stanford University Dr. Jack Ruina Dr. Richard Wilson Professor of Electrical Energy and Environmental Engineering Center Massachusetts Institute of Harvard University Technology Mr. Peter Schuck Dr. Rosalyn Yalow Professor of Law Nobel Laureate in Medicine Yale University Bronx Veterans’ Hospital Dr. Eileen Serene Department of Philosophy Yale University kek KKK James W. Vaupel (Study Director) Duke University John D. Graham (Staff Associate/Research Assistant) Yvonne W. Cassells (Administrative Secretary) Address Please address all correspondence to: Mr. John D. Graham, Staff Associate CORADM/JH-818 National Academy of Sciences 2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20418 Our telephone numbers are (202) 389-6853 and 6854.