Risk Assessment: Tools, Techniques, and Their Applications

Chapter 2

Risk Perception

Simply defined, the word risk denotes some measure of uncertainty. In casual use, risk implies negative consequence while opportunity implies positive consequence (1).

Perception is the process of interpreting sensory stimuli by filtering it through one's experiences and knowledge base. Note that perception is not the same as sensation, as the latter term is physiological and the former is learned (2).

Taken together, risk perception is an individual or group assessment of the potential for negative consequence. Within emergency management circles, understanding the public's general perception of risk (for instance, the isolated opinion contains peaks and valleys) is useful in establishing the necessary level of preincident emergency training, public relations and instructions/recommendations during the incident, and postincident continuing communications. Risk perception plays into the choices made as to what information is to be provided and in what format—both inside the affected organization and outside. From the company's management structure to its blue-collar workers to its colocated workers to the neighboring suburbs and beyond, risk perception is as close to “the facts” as each person gets until their vision is altered by some later, greater truth.

Like the proverbial two-edged sword, risk perception both serves and hinders emergency management (EM) organizations and, subsequently, those protected and supported by the EM function. At one tapered ...