Effective risk communication is essential to the well-being of any organization and those people who depend on it. Ineffective communication can cost lives, money and reputations. Communicating Risks and Benefits: An Evidence-Based User’s Guide provides the scientific foundations for effective communications. The book authoritatively summarizes the relevant research, draws out its implications for communication design, and provides practical ways to evaluate and improve communications for any decision involving risks and benefits. Topics include the communication of quantitative information and warnings, the roles of emotion and the news media, the effects of age and literacy, and tests of how well communications meet the organization’s goals. The guide will help users in any organization, with any budget, to make the science of their communications as sound as the science that they are communicating.

"During public health emergencies, people need to know what health risks they face, and what actions they can take to protect their health and lives. Accurate information provided early, often, and in languages and channels that people understand, trust and use, enables individuals to make choices and take actions to protect themselves, their families and communities from threatening health hazards." -- Publisher's description.

Risk communication: the evolution of attempts Risk communication is at once a very new and a very old field of interest. Risk analysis, as Krimsky and Plough (1988:2) point out, dates back at least to the Babylonians in 3200 BC. Cultures have traditionally utilized a host of mecha nisms for anticipating, responding to, and communicating about hazards - as in food avoidance, taboos, stigma of persons and places, myths, migration, etc. Throughout history, trade between places has necessitated labelling of containers to indicate their contents. Seals at sites of the ninth century BC Harappan civilization of South Asia record the owner and/or contents of the containers (Hadden, 1986:3). The Pure Food and Drug Act, the first labelling law with national scope in the United States, was passed in 1906. Common law covering the workplace in a number of countries has traditionally required that employers notify workers about significant dangers that they encounter on the job, an obligation formally extended to chronic hazards in the OSHA's Hazard Communication regulation of 1983 in the United States. In this sense, risk communication is probably the oldest way of risk manage ment. However, it is only until recently that risk communication has attracted the attention of regulators as an explicit alternative to the by now more common and formal approaches of standard setting, insuring etc. (Baram, 1982).

The procedure uses approaches from risk and decision analysis to identity the most relevant information; it also uses approaches from psychology and communication theory to ensure that its message is understood. This book is written in nontechnical terms, designed to make the approach feasible for anyone willing to try it. It is illustrated with successful communications, on a variety of topics."--Jacket.

Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will be most effective for specific audiences and circumstances are not obvious. Fortunately, there is an expanding science base from diverse disciplines that can support science communicators in making these determinations. Communicating Science Effectively offers a research agenda for science communicators and researchers seeking to apply this research and fill gaps in knowledge about how to communicate effectively about science, focusing in particular on issues that are contentious in the public sphere. To inform this research agenda, this publication identifies important influences â€" psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media-related â€" on how science related to such issues is understood, perceived, and used.

A resource for public officials on the basic tenets of effective communications generally and on working with the news media specifically. Focuses on providing public officials with a brief orientation and perspective on the media and how they think and work, and on the public as the end-recipient of info.; concise presentations of techniques for responding to and cooperating with the media in conveying info. and delivering messages, before, during, and after a public health crisis; a practical guide to the tools of the trade of media relations and public communications; and strategies and tactics for addressing the probable opportunities and the possible challenges that are likely to arise as a consequence of such communication initiatives. Ill.

The demand for health information continues to increase, but the ability of health professionals to provide it clearly remains variable. The aim of this book is (1) to summarize and synthesize research on the selection and presentation of data pertinent to public health, and (2) to provide practical suggestions, based on this research summary and synthesis, on how scientists and other public health practitioners can better communicate data to the public, policy makers, and the press in typical real-world situations. Because communication is complex and no one approach works for all audiences, the authors emphasize how to communicate data "better" (and in some instances, contrast this with how to communicate data "worse"), rather than attempting a cookbook approach. The book contains a wealth of case studies and other examples to illustrate major points, and actual situations whenever possible. Key principles and recommendations are summarized at the end of each chapter. This book will stimulate interest among public health practitioners, scholars, and students to more seriously consider ways they can understand and improve communication about data and other types of scientific information with the public, policy makers, and the press. Improved data communication will increase the chances that evidence-based scientific findings can play a greater role in improving the public's health.

IBWAS 2009, the Iberic Conference on Web Applications Security, was the first international conference organized by both the OWASP Portuguese and Spanish ch- ters in order to join the international Web application security academic and industry communities to present and discuss the major aspects of Web applications security. There is currently a change in the information systems development paradigm. The emergence of Web 2. 0 technologies led to the extensive deployment and use of W- based applications and Web services as a way to develop new and flexible information systems. Such systems are easy to develop, deploy and maintain and they demonstrate impressive features for users, resulting in their current wide use. The “social” features of these technologies create the necessary “massification” effects that make millions of users share their own personal information and content over large web-based int- active platforms. Corporations, businesses and governments all over the world are also developing and deploying more and more applications to interact with their bu- nesses, customers, suppliers and citizens to enable stronger and tighter relations with all of them. Moreover, legacy non-Web systems are being ported to this new intrin- cally connected environment. IBWAS 2009 brought together application security experts, researchers, educators and practitioners from industry, academia and international communities such as OWASP, in order to discuss open problems and new solutions in application security. In the context of this track, academic researchers were able to combine interesting results with the experience of practitioners and software engineers.

This book reflects the current thinking and research on how consumers’ perception of product risks and benefits affects their behavior. It provides the scientific, regulatory and industrial research community with a conceptual and methodological reference point for studies on consumer behavior and marketing. The contributions address various aspects of consumer psychology and behavior, risk perception and communication, marketing research strategies, as well as consumer product regulation. The book is divided into 4 parts: Product risks; Perception of product risks and benefits; Consumer behavior; Regulation and responsibility.