Final Program - Society for Risk Analysis

While integral to guiding the development of sound science-based policies toprotect public health, these probabilistic risk assessments are data intensiveand take several months up to a few years to develop. In the event of incidentssuch as fires, chemical or oil spills, or other accidental or intentional releasesof chemical contaminants, there is a need to rapidly evaluate environmentaland public health risks. This symposium will explore the development of rapidrisk evaluation approaches and modeling tools developed by the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration to rapidly respond tofood safety incidents, and by the Environmental Protection Agency to addressaccidental environmental releases. Panelists will discuss a wide array issues indeveloping rapid risk evaluation systems, including the development of novelmodeling methods to guide public heath-based laboratory detection methodsfor emerging hazards, use of graphical tools to array the available dose-responsedata and/or health effect reference values available for the agent beingconsidered, and the role of toxicity values using structural-surrogates forchemicals that lack adequate human or animal studies. Case studies will bepresented along with information on the utility of these models and lessonslearned.W2-H Symposium: Risk Communication in the US Hurricane Forecastand Warning SystemFrom the National Climatic Data Center list of billion dollar U.S. weatherevents from 1980 to 2009, 25 out of the 96 were hurricanes (Lott, Ross,Smith, Houston, & Shein, 2010). Despite significant and ongoing improvementsin hurricane forecast accuracy, economic and social risks from hurricanescontinue to grow, and may be exacerbated by increasing frequencyor intensity of extreme weather events due to climate change. Forecasts andwarnings can contribute to the protective action decisions that individualsmake during hurricanes, but research suggests room for improvement. Justcommunicating the probabilities required to demonstrate the uncertaintyimplicit in weather forecasting has proven particularly difficult for the meteorologicalcommunity (Joslyn, Nadav-Greenberg, Taing, & Nichols, 2009;Morss, Demuth, & Lazo 2008). This session reports on research to assessthe status of and specific potentials for improvements in the U.S. hurricaneforecast and warning system. The first paper in the session explorespeople’s awareness and understanding of storm surge risks and preferencesfor surge warning information messages (Lazo, NCAR). The second paperexamines the social and cultural communication context of the hurricanewarning system with an emphasis on inter-organizational successes and challenges(Demuth, NCAR and Colorado State). The third paper reports newfindings about the effectiveness of alternative communication approachesderived by observing behavior in realistic hurricane simulations (Meyer, U.Penn). The final paper in the session reports on forecasters’ understandingand perceptions of the hurricane forecast and warning system, based onindividual mental models interviews and a group decision modeling sessionwith forecasters from the National Hurricane Center and the Miami-DadeWeather Forecast Office (Bostrom, U. Washington).W3-C Symposium: Graphic Depictions of Toxicological DataGraphical depictions of toxicological and epidemiological data (e.g., exposure-responsearrays and forest plots) are increasingly being incorporated intorisk assessment documents. Exposure-response arrays have recently been addedto documents developed by the EPA for the IRIS program, and they havebeen proposed for inclusion into the Integrated Science Assessment (ISA)documents for the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. There are similardata presentations in the Technical Support Documents developed for theAcute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGLs) and have long been a part of theToxicological Profiles developed by ATSDR. Similarly, forest plots have beenused to depict epidemiological data and have become integral components ofthe ISA documents, as well as in NIEHS National Toxicology Program documents.The goals of this symposium are to highlight recent activities withinFederal Agencies in developing the most effective and consistent approachesto relaying complex toxicological and epidemiological information into moreeasily understood graphic displays.W3-E Symposium: Innovative Means of Data Collection to Support aQuantitative Risk AssessmentQuantitative risk assessments depend on availability of data from multiplesources. Although classic approaches such as market basket surveys, laboratorystudies and regulatory sampling continue to be the main data sources forexposure assessment of food hazards (including microbial pathogens and pollutants),recently innovative means have been used to expand data acquisitioncapacity. For example, site visits to manufacturing plants, produce growingfields and cruise ships have been conducted to help risk assessment teamsbetter understand the industry and potential routes of contamination. Seeingfirst-hand industry control measures and differences among establishmentscan facilitate the development of more realistic product-pathway models. An-49