| GaMON policy theme 2 'Woon- en leefomgeving' identifies external safety as one of the problems people may experience in their direct living environment. External safety comprises all risk issues related to the production, storage and transport of hazardous materials. Apart from discussing necessary and feasible safety policies in private companies, policy makers and researchers working on external safety issues are confronted with questions that are typical for risk communication. The FRIS research program we propose here focuses on the role of risk perception and risk communication in the complex problem of external safety. In the Netherlands, provincial authorities and municipalities are working on digital risk maps, that are open for inspection to the public, and which will inform the public of existing external safety issues in their immediate living surroundings. The digital risk map is designed to increase the risk and safety awareness about external safety issues among governmental officials, companies, individual citizens and other stakeholders. So far, the actual impact of the digital risk map is not studied. The basic assumption of the proposed research project is that the success or failure of risk communication about external safety issues lies in the interaction of the individual citizen's seeking and processing of risk information and the social implementation of risk communication policies by government (at various levels) and companies for which external safety issues are relevant. Two subprojects are proposed: a four-year PhD project (1.0 fte) and a three-year post-doc project (0.5 fte). The PhD project has a theoretical, fundamental focus and provides better insight and understanding of the determinants of risk information sufficiency, applied to external safety issues. In the PhD project a new theoretical framework will be developed, which is called FRIS, the Framework of Risk Information Sufficiency. In the post-doc project, which is aimed at the implementation of the new insights into policy and practice, we will address the question how stakeholders such as governments (local, provincial, national) and the private sector (the risk "owners") can design or adopt risk communication policies and implement those policies on the local level, where external safety issues are most relevant to the public. More in particular we will focus here on communication strategies involving the digital risk map. Theoretically, the post-doc project will link the Framework of Risk Information Sufficiency with the concept of control mutuality. This concept is relevant to the understanding of public participation processes. An important intended product of the post-doc project is an integrative plan to stimulate the implementation of the results of the studies working with the FRIS / control mutuality framework in the risk communication policies of governmental organizations (at all levels) and other stakeholders. The two projects comprise research activities (surveys, case studies) with problem diagnostic characteristics that aim to increase our knowledge of certain aspects of the risk communication process related to external safety issues. Another part of the program is aimed at identifying strategic decisions for governmental organisations and other stakeholders with respect to their risk communication policies. The close cooperation of the program applicants, the PhD and the post-doc and the simultaneous research activities will lead to synergy: the FRIS program as a whole has added value to both separate projects. Other distinctive features of the FRIS program are: the focus on an important GaMon-related policy issue, the multidisciplinary collaboration for the digital risk map, a multiple stakeholder approach, and a multi-methodology approach. |
