Democratizing Risk Management: Principles for
Successful Public Involvement In Risk Management Contexts. Tim McDaniels, Westwater Research Centre and School of Community and
Regional Planning University of British Columbia, telephone 604-822-9288, fax
604-822-3787, e-mail timmcd@unixg.ubc.ca
Two major advisory commissions in the United States have
recently recommended that greater emphasis be placed on public involvement in
risk management decisions. Yet how to involve the public effectively in public
policy decisions regarding health, safety and environment remains an important
but unanswered question. Behavioural research findings raise concerns about the
ability of the general public to cope with the complexity of risk management
choices. These findings also place great emphasis on the role of the analyst in
structuring the judgement tasks that people must address in public involvement
efforts.
This
paper first identifies four concepts (all drawn from decision analytic practice)
important for designing public involvement efforts in risk management contexts.
These include: value focused thinking, adaptive management, a structured
decision process, and an informative decision rule. Then the paper discusses a
public involvement process built on these principles that successfully resolved
a river management conflict facing an electric utility in British Columbia. The
paper concludes with of a discussion of the criteria useful for judging success
in public involvement contexts such as this one.
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