Scientific Uncertainty and Food Risk Regulation

Scientific knowledge has become one of the most important prerequisites for making regulatory decisions. For instance, food risk policies are based on the framework of risk analysis which has been an effort to apply universal and formal methods of science to risk assessment and to place societal response to hazards on a scientific footing. This project is proposing a US/EU comparative empirical study that investigates the ways uncertainties are perceived, handled and expressed by experts throughout the food risk analysis process. The project is interdisciplinary, involving scientists from sociology, economics, risk analysis and computer science. It relies on the building of a database to store risk assessment and management documents. The database will provide computer scientists with a unique testing environment where researchers and risk professionals will help calibrate the system. Sociologists will address the substantive questions framing the research using mixed method analysis. Computer scientist will participate in developing 1. the database based on structure and semi- structured information , 2. a coding aid based on machine learning, 3. an interactive visual interface that allows efficient multi-scale navigation in a large corpus of annotated documents, and 4. a case-based reasoning system aiding risk managers.

Research activities

Participants