Analysis of Catastrophes and Their Public Health Consequences

Paolo F. Ricci, PhD, LLM, is a professor at the EU's Erasmus Mundus Programs in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Previously he was a professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; professor at Holy Names University in Oakland, California, USA; visiting professor at Xiamen University in China; and, professor at University of Bologna in Italy. For more than 30 years, Dr. Ricci -- a senior Fulbright scholar (specialist, 2010-2015) and appointed peer reviewer for Fulbright Specialists selection (2013-2014) -- has led qualitative and quantitative analyses in public health and epidemiology and conducted experimental work in, among other countries, the United States, Canada, Italy, Australia, France, Vietnam, China, the Ivory Coast, and the European Union. He was the head of the Environmental Technologies Clearinghouse of the IEA/OECD (with full diplomatic status) and has served as a peer reviewer of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) activities regarding human health risks from past nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site. Until 2014, Dr. Ricci was an associate editor of the journal Environment International for more than 15 years.

• Chapter 1. Black Swans, dragon-kings, and Other Catastrophes: Caught Between Infinitesimals and Googols.- Chapter 2. Policy and Legal Aspects of Precautionary Choices.- Chapter 3. Catastrophes, Disasters, and Calamities: Concepts for Their Assessment .- Chapter 4. Catastrophic Incidents: Critical Information and Knowledge.- Chapter 5. Uncertainty: Probabilistic and Statistical Aspects.- Chapter 6. Preferences, Choices and Probabilistic Dominance: An Overview.- Chapter 7. Heterogeneous and Uncertain Knowledge: Beyond Probabilities.- Chapter 8. Aggregating Judgments to Inform Precautionary Decision-making.