ABSTRACTMunicipal authorities play a critical role in risk communication, yet little is known about how their messages influence public safety behavior. This study examined how municipal informational messages shaped behavioral intentions across five emergency scenarios (wildfires, flooding, hazardous materials, extreme weather, and civil unrest) in a representative sample of 1509 adults. Using a cross‐sectional experiment, we compared participants exposed to rumors alone versus rumors with municipal guidance. Results show that municipal messaging significantly reduced counterproductive behaviors such as rumor‐spreading and convergence on hazard sites, though it had limited effects on preparedness and proactive information seeking. Trust in national authorities remained stronger than in local governments, and demographic factors such as gender, age, and political orientation moderated behavioral responses. These findings extend established models of risk communication by highlighting the contextual role of municipal authorities and suggest that local communication strategies are best framed as harm‐reduction tools. The study underscores the need for scenario‐specific message design, proactive trust‐building, and future field‐based research to capture real‐world behaviors.

ABSTRACTThe COVID‐19 pandemic exposed the cascading and systemic nature of risks, in low‐income, multi‐hazard contexts such as Malawi, where pre‐existing vulnerabilities amplified impacts across health, economic, and social systems. This study draws on qualitative data from stakeholder workshops and key informant interviews, triangulated with national statistics, to analyze how overburdened health systems, disrupted livelihoods, and inequitable resource distribution heightened socio‐economic fragility. It also examines how concurrent hazards, including flooding and cholera outbreaks, interacted with the pandemic to intensify the crisis and expose limitations in Malawi's disaster risk management systems. The analysis highlights the importance of adaptive mechanisms, including urban cash transfer programs, for supporting vulnerable groups and mitigating cascading socio‐economic impacts during crises. Key innovations, including digital tracking tools, local production of essential supplies, and scalable social protection mechanisms, emerged as pathways for strengthening institutional resilience. The findings emphasize the need for anticipatory, multi‐hazard disaster risk management strategies that prioritize shock‐sensitive social protection and cross‐sectoral coordination to strengthen system‐wide resilience. By situating qualitative insights with documented hazard and socio‐economic patterns, this paper contributes to systemic risk scholarship in multi‐hazard, resource‐constrained environments.

ABSTRACT Even though Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is used in the majority of risk assessments, there is a persistent gap between creating a plausible‐looking fault tree diagram and producing a valid, quantifiable risk assessment from it. Stoelinga, Ruijters and Krčál's The Concise Guide to Fault Tree Analysis: Models, Methods and Algorithms (Springer/Birkhäuser, 2026) bridges this gap by treating Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) as a combination of a logical discipline of engineering and a set of computational methods for generating results from FTA models. The book provides a clear connection between the process disciplines involved in developing FTA models and the algorithms that are actually used to generate cut sets, top event probabilities and importance values, while emphasizing the need to be cautious when interpreting these values as objective facts. As such, the Concise Guide to Fault Tree Analysis will provide a useful resource to anyone who builds, reviews, or interprets fault trees, regardless of domain, by improving the accuracy and transparency of FTA and the overall quality of FTA reports.

ABSTRACTSeveral cancer potency estimates have been proposed by regulatory agencies to characterize the dose response of cobalt and/or cobalt compounds. The objective of this research is to investigate whether these proposed cancer potency estimates for certain cobalt substances align with the available epidemiology literature. After review of the epidemiological literature, we identified a study appropriate for our analysis. We established whether our identified study was adequately powered to detect an elevated lung cancer risk. The power analysis assumed a Poisson distribution and used a one‐sided significance level of 0.05. Lung tumors in animals served as the basis for cancer potency estimates for several regulatory bodies. The study population from our identified study was used to calculate predicted excess lung cancer deaths using potency values reported by four regulatory organizations, which were then compared to observed lung cancer deaths. Monte Carlo methods were used to estimate sample size and cobalt exposure distribution of the highest exposure group. We determined that the our identified study has ≥ 98% statistical power to detect a 1.5‐fold or greater increase in lung cancer due to cobalt exposure in all but the lowest exposure group and all four exposure groups had 100% statistical power to detect a 2.0‐fold or greater increase in lung cancer due to cobalt exposure. Cobalt exposure at the estimated median of the highest exposure group resulted in hypothetical standardized mortality ratios (SMR) estimated from the regulatory potency values ranging from 3.54 to 8.61 compared to an observed SMR of 1.15 (95% CI: 0.92–1.43) in our identified study. On the basis of this analysis, the cancer potency estimates proposed by the included regulatory organizations are likely overestimations of excess lifetime human cancer risk after cobalt inhalation exposure.

ABSTRACTRecent literature has examined the role of misinformation, biases, and other factors in contributing to the integrity of a risk study. These types of social and cognitive dynamics—referred to as narratives—comprise concern and value in a risk study. These narratives may appear to undermine aspects of objectivity in a scientific sense, but they may also shed light on aspects of a risk study that involve perceived scientific truths, related risk concerns, and values. The narratives can inform overall risk perception and the perception of quality for the risk study. As a result, understanding and classifying those narratives provides additional evidence that can potentially inform decisions for the design and implementation of a risk study. In this article, we develop a classification system that can be used to understand and address narratives that can influence a risk study and how various stakeholders perceive the risk study. This article will be of interest to risk analysts, policymakers, and risk communicators.

ABSTRACTThis study investigates how local context—specifically urban versus rural environments and socioeconomic conditions—influences individual crisis preparedness and resilience in Sweden. Using multilevel survey data from 12,574 respondents, we analyze both proactive preparedness actions and perceived resilience. Results show that rural residents report higher levels of preparedness and resilience than their urban counterparts. However, these differences in preparedness attenuate when controlling for individual risk perception, suggesting a mediating role. Socioeconomic context, on the other hand, does not show an independent effect beyond individual characteristics, indicating compositional rather than contextual influences. The findings highlight the importance of tailoring crisis preparedness strategies to both individual and local characteristics and stress the need for authorities to consider spatial disparities in vulnerability when planning for future crises.

ABSTRACTFugitive dust from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is a potential source of produce contamination with human pathogens. Our objective was to develop a general framework and methodology for predicting preharvest produce contamination with human pathogens arising from fugitive dust derived from a nearby CAFO. We applied this framework to a case study of lettuce grown in proximity to a bovine CAFO. We implemented the EPA's AERMOD dispersion model at two locations, assessing dust dispersion and deposition over a 30‐day period across 100 km2 surrounding a 10,000‐animal CAFO. E. coli O157:H7 contaminated lettuce servings grown on fields within the 100 km2 were predicted using a risk assessment approach, integrating data about dust deposition, pathogen contamination in cattle manure, and pathogen survival on crops. To contextualize the results, infectious servings were predicted based on the average number of E. coli O157:H7 per serving and the E. coli O157:H7 dose−response relationship. Dust from CAFOs has the potential to deposit across at least 100 km2. E. coli O157:H7 dispersion and deposition are impacted by wind direction and velocity, emission factor, and prevalence and concentration in dust. Mean E. coli O157:H7 concentrations on preharvest lettuce were predicted across the 100 km2 and declined considerably with distance from the CAFO. Surviving E. coli O157:H7 on preharvest lettuce arise primarily from dust deposited in the 2 weeks before harvest. Our modeling approach provides a flexible framework that can be adapted to any location, providing quantitative information to inform foodborne outbreak investigations and the development of prevention strategies.

Future pandemics could arise from several sources, notably, emerging infectious diseases (EID); and lab leaks from high containment biological laboratories (HCBL). Recent advances in infectious disease, information technology, and biotechnology provide building blocks to reduce pandemic risk if deployed intelligently. However, the global nature of infectious diseases, distribution of HCBLs, and increasing complexity of transmission dynamics due to travel networks make it difficult to determine how to best deploy mitigation efforts. Increasing understanding of the risk landscape posed by EID and HCBL lab leaks could improve risk reduction efforts. The presented paper develops a country‐level spatial network susceptible‐infected‐removed model based on global travel network data and relative risk measures of potential origin sources, EID, and lab leaks from biological safety level 3+ and 4 labs, to explore expected infections over the first 30 days of a pandemic. Model outputs indicate that EID and lab leaks in India, the USA, and China are most impacted at day 30. For EID, expected infections shift from high EID origin potential countries at day 10 to the USA, India, and China, while for lab leaks, the USA and India start with high lab leak potential. With respect to model uncertainties and limitations, results indicate several large, wealthy countries are influential to pandemic risk from both EID and lab leaks, indicating high leverage points for mitigation efforts.

ABSTRACTThe International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) was a nonprofit foundation, based first as an independent, freestanding Swiss foundation in Geneva from 2003 to 2012, and then affiliated with École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne from 2012 to 2023. IRGC's mission was to identify and improve the governance of emerging and systemic risks that have, or could have, impacts on human and environmental health, the economy and society, and overall sustainability. In this paper, we recount IRGC's history, describe its many reports, workshops, and conference activities (including tables referencing the many published products), and provide six brief case histories of accomplishments and insights on work IRGC has done on solar radiation management, small modular reactors, synthetic biology, autonomous vehicles, resilience and systemic risks, and international comparison of risk governance. The paper concludes with some brief observations about the impact of IRGC's work and notes the continuing need for a neutral convening entity that can perform a role similar to that of IRGC.