Description

The International Conference on Uncertainty in Risk Analysis brings together internationally recognised leaders in theoretical and applied uncertainty analysis with a focus on the areas of food safety, environmental health, occupational health, animal health and plant health.

The conference will be a forum for discussing the science behind uncertainty analysis and show case of best practices in conducting and communicating uncertainty analysis as well as for addressing uncertainty in decision making.

Networking and sharing experience at the conference is anticipated to enhance the mutual understanding and interaction of partners in risk analysis and support and enhance the practice of uncertainty analysis.

The conference is a two-day event with preconference workshops and will be composed of invited and submitted talks, poster sessions and interactive sessions.

It will feature a wide range of topics including:

• Uncertainty from a cognitive science point of view (cognitive perspective on belief; knowledge and uncertainty; epistemic logic; cognitive biases; perspectives of philosophy and psychology)

• Methods for uncertainty analysis (judgements; subjective probabilities; qualitative, quantitative and tiered approaches; uncertainty in evidence from individual and aggregated studies; systematic review; publication bias; lack of reproducibility; weight of evidence; sensitivity analysis)
  
  
• Communication of uncertainties (documentation and visualisation of uncertainties; perception of risk and uncertainty; target-oriented communication; education; lessons-learnt; dealing with fear and mistrust; communication strategies)
  
  
• Accounting for uncertainty in decision making (impact on risk management and regulation; decision theory; lessons-learnt; precautionary principle)
  
  
• Dialogues on uncertainty in an open society (knowledge brokering; roles of players in science, management, politics, democracy, stakeholders; global governance; conflicting interests; instrumentalisation of uncertainties; reproducibility crisis)

 
Workshop abstracts

Conference website at EFSA
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/events/event/190221

 
Organisers:

European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR)

Programme

Proceedings

 

Live stream recording

Presentation slides from 21.02.2019

Topic I: Uncertainty from a cognitive science point of view

Karl H. Teigen, University of Oslo, Norway
The taming of uncertainty: How we make sense of it by words and numbers

Scott Ferson, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Cognitive biases arise in conflating epistemic and aleatory uncertainty

Ullrika Sahlin, Lund University, Sweden
Using games to train or test our ability to express epistemic uncertainty

Topic II: Methods of uncertainty analysis

Zora Kovacic, University of Bergen, Norway
Uncertainty within and beyond the data: approaches to deal with different types of unknowns

James Rathman, Molecular Networks GmbH and Altamira, LLC, Germany
Application of Dempster-Shafer theory to estimate uncertainty and combine diverse sources of evidence in chemical risk assessment

Jukka Ranta, Finnish Food Authority, Finland
Uncertainty and variability in Bayesian inference for dietary risk: Listeria in RTE fish

Bas Bokkers, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands
Introduction to APROBA-Plus: A probabilistic tool to evaluate and express uncertainty in hazard characterization and exposure assessment of substances

John Paul Gosling, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Uncertainty quantification in next generation risk assessment

Victoria Hemming, University of Melbourne, Australia
The IDEA Protocol and performance weighting for expert elicitation

Natalie von Götz, Swiss Federal Office of Public Health, Switzerland
Uncertainty assessment for interdependent parameters, exemplified by PBPK modelling for risk assessment

Juliana De Oliveira Mota, National Institute of Agricultural Research, France
Managing uncertainty and variability when assessing beneficial source of iron brought by red meat consumption in France

Alberto Garre, Technical University of Cartagena, Spain
Quantifying the bias of the viable cell enumeration process and its impact on microbial inactivation

Sebastian Hoffmann, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, USA
How evidence-based methodology can contribute to uncertainty assessment

Silke Gabbert, Wageningen University & Research, The Netherlands
Assessing the borderline range of prediction models: Method and implications for decision-making

Laura Urso, Federal Office for Radiation Protection, Germany
Conceptual model uncertainty in radioecology

Presentation slides from 22.02.2019

Topic III: Communication of uncertainties

Michael Siegrist, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Uncertainties about the Communication of Uncertainties

Scott Ferson, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
Communicating probability with natural frequencies and the equivalent binomial count

Terje Aven, University of Stavanger, Norway
Representing and expressing uncertainties and risk in a scientific context

Topic IV: Accounting for uncertainty in decision making

M. Granger Morgan, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Reflections on Framing and Making Decisions in the Face of Uncertainty

Edoardo Tosoni, Aalto University, Finland
Scenario comprehensiveness in risk analysis

Andrea Richarz, European Commission Joint Research Centre, Italy
Uncertainty characterisation in Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) for Chemical Risk Assessment – Mapping of Available Guidance and Identification of Gaps

Karen Luyckx, Global Feedback Ltd, United Kingdom
Surplus food as animal feed: risks, benefits and uncertainties

Topic V: Dialogues on uncertainty in an open society

Piet Sellke, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Germany
Governing and communicating risks in a post-truth era