| In recent years, the dealing with natural hazards in Switzerland has
shifted away from being hazard-oriented towards a risk-based
approach. Decreasing societal acceptance of risk, accompanied by
increasing marginal costs of protective measures and decreasing
financial resources cause an optimization problem. Therefore, the new
focus lies on the mitigation of the hazard's risk in accordance with
economical, ecological and social considerations.
This modern proceeding requires an approach in which not only
technological, engineering or scientific aspects of the definition of the
hazard or the computation of the risk are considered, but also the
public concerns about the acceptance of these risks. These aspects of
a modern risk approach enable a comprehensive assessment of
the (risk) situation and, thus, sound risk management decisions.
In Switzerland, however, the competent authorities suffer from a lack of
decision criteria, as they don't know what risk level the public is
willing to accept. Consequently, there exists a need for the
authorities to know what the society thinks about risks. A formalized model that
allows at least a crude simulation of the public risk evaluation could therefore
be a useful tool to support effective and efficient risk mitigation measures.
This paper presents a conceptual approach of such an
evaluation model using perception affecting factors PAF, evaluation
criteria EC and several factors without any immediate relation to
the risk itself, but to the evaluating person. Finally, the decision
about the acceptance Acc of a certain risk i is made by a
comparison of the perceived risk Ri,perc with the acceptable risk Ri,acc. |