Management Science and Operations Group, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.
Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Risk Anal. 2020 Nov;40(11):2462-2477. doi: 10.1111/risa.13542. Epub 2020 Jun 24.
The increasing need to manage biosecurity threats, such as diseases, zoonoses, and biological weapons, poses serious challenges for risk analysts and policymakers. These threats are large in number, can occur concurrently, and may cause multiple tangible and intangible impacts. They often have an emerging nature, exacerbated by incomplete evidence about their probability of occurrence and potential impacts. There is also a limited amount of time and resources available to evaluate the risks posed by each threat, and it is difficult to learn from past projects. On the other hand, there is also a need to provide policymakers with transparent and consistent threat prioritizations, together with evidence-based recommendations. In response to these challenges, we propose a risk analysis framework for the prioritization and management of biosecurity threats. The framework encompasses key design choices that analysts may use in risk analysis projects along three dimensions: risk support, risk group, and risk organization. The framework has prescriptive value, as a design tool to inform risk analysis projects in this context, along with descriptive value, as a learning tool to understand past projects. We applied the framework prescriptively in two biosecurity threat prioritization projects for the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and illustrate its descriptive value by reporting our experience of these projects as in-depth case studies. Overall, the proposed framework provides important insights into the impact of different design choices on the success of risk analysis projects for biosecurity threat prioritizations.
生物安全威胁（如疾病、人畜共患病和生物武器）管理需求不断增加，这给风险分析师和政策制定者带来了严峻挑战。这些威胁数量众多，可能同时发生，并可能造成多种有形和无形的影响。它们往往具有新兴性质，由于发生概率和潜在影响的证据不完整而加剧。评估每个威胁所带来的风险的时间和资源也很有限，而且很难从过去的项目中吸取经验教训。另一方面，也需要为政策制定者提供透明和一致的威胁优先级排序，并提供基于证据的建议。为应对这些挑战，我们提出了一个用于生物安全威胁优先级排序和管理的风险分析框架。该框架涵盖了分析师在风险分析项目中可能在三个维度上使用的关键设计选择：风险支持、风险群体和风险组织。该框架具有规定价值，作为在此背景下告知风险分析项目的设计工具，以及描述性价值，作为理解过去项目的学习工具。我们在英国环境、食品和农村事务部的两个生物安全威胁优先级排序项目中进行了框架的规定性应用，并通过深入案例研究报告这些项目的经验来说明其描述性价值。总的来说，该框架为生物安全威胁优先级排序的风险分析项目的不同设计选择对成功的影响提供了重要的见解。
