Values and Risks - A Research Proposal for IIASA

Pate, M.E. (1979). Values and Risks - A Research Proposal for IIASA. IIASA Working Paper. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: WP-79-094

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Abstract

The issue of risk has been a focus of attention in the last few years, in particular in fields where new technologies were introduced, with great promises of reward but also involving hazards that society has sometimes shown some reluctance to accept. Policy-making in the public sector, for those domains where risks have to be balanced with economic costs or benefits, implicitly or explicitly involves a system of values.

IIASA has been concerned with and involved with these problems for some time. A substantial amount of work was done in the Energy Program in conjunction with IAEA. The Management and Technology Area has been involved in these studies, and is currently engaged on a major project concerning the management of high-risk technological situations (oil blow-outs, nuclear reactors, LNG plants). The SDS area is concerned with methodological aspects, and every Area and program is tackling problems of a risk-like structure. Accordingly, serious consideration is being given to the possibility of expanding and coordinating these interests to form an IIASA program.

This paper therefore represents a stage in the process of developing such a program. It has been prepared by Professor Marie-Elisabeth Pate, a visiting scholar to IIASA, jointly within the MMT and SDS Areas. It is a proposal for a large IIASA study aimed at exploring the relation between values and risks; comparing risks and policies in different sectors, looking into the problems of risk valuation and eventually comparing different solutions of risk management, those are the goals of this proposal. In this paper the issues that could be addressed in the IIASA framework are identified and research directions suggested.

At the time of preparing this, the formulation process has gone a stage further with the preparation of a further document (incorporating much of Professor Pate's ideas) for consideration by the IIASA Council.

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