Decoding Black Swans and Other Historic Risk Events

The field of risk science is continuously evolving to develop principles and practices that enable individuals, organizations, and societies to understand and manage future risk. These risk events are reminders that risk and uncertainty are prevalent, yet it is important to consider what is on the horizon, anticipate the possibility of future events, its consequences, our vulnerability to those events, and how to recover from them. Decoding Black Swans and Other Historic Risk Events is a guide towards understanding risk events and how to act before they occur. By exploring some historic risk events, this book analyzes how risk science principles apply in such instances and studies whether current risk science concepts and approaches could potentially have avoided, reduced the impact, or supported recovery following the risk event. It offers new insights by applying recent research progress in understanding and managing risk, considering aspects including quality of evidence, information, and misinformation in risk studies. The results are used to identify how risk science approaches contribute to the overall management of risk and societal safety, and where improvements can be obtained, allowing the reader to possess a toolkit for identifying and planning for unsafe events. This title will benefit professionals in the fields of occupational health and safety, risk management, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, energy, marine engineering, environmental engineering, business and management, and healthcare.