From the Editors

Abstract

In 2013, the SRA Council approved a new Specialty Group on Foundational Issues in Risk Analysis.The first part of this issue presents a series of six papers on foundational topics in risk analysis; the first four emerged from a workshop held in Sal ó, on Lake Garda, Italy, in August 2012.The first paper, by Policy Area Editor Terje Aven and Enrico Zio, summarizes the background and motivation for the workshop and its key conclusions.It discusses the needs, obstacles and challenges for creating a renewed, stronger scientific foundation for risk assessment and risk management to support current and future technological challenges.The paper reflects on the concept of "foundations of risk assessment and risk management" and the challenges therein, and points to research issues for the coming years.The remaining papers in the series discuss several foundational challenges (italicized in the following paragraphs).Next, Sven Ove Hansson and Terje Aven ask whether risk analysis is scientific, if "science" is interpreted broadly as the practice that provides us with the most reliable statements that can be made on subjects covered by the community of knowledge disciplines, i.e. on nature, ourselves as human beings, our societies, our physical constructions, and our thought constructions.They conclude that risk analysis is a scientific field of study, when understood as consisting primarily of (i) knowledge about risk-related phenomena, processes, events, etc., and (ii) concepts, theories, frameworks, approaches, principles, methods and models to understand, assess, characterize, communicate and manage risk, in general and for specific applications (the instrumental part).A model for risk analysis is presented in which science is used as a base for decision-making on risks.It relates the five elements of evidence, knowledge base, broad risk evaluation, managerial review and judgment, and decision to the domains Experts and Decision makers, and to the domains Fact-based or Value-based.The third paper, by Elisabeth Pat é-Cornell and Tony Cox, surveys "lame excuses" for poor risk man-

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