I think risk communication may be the biggest challenge in the overall picture in managing risk in our workplace and our world. The last definition for today is risk analysis . This is an umbrella term that includes the entire process of risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. We've heard other people use the term risk characterization this afternoon, too. There is currently a lot of debate about the definition of risk characterization.
Many people use that term interchangeably with risk analysis.
This afternoon we've heard people talk about dose-response relationship. This comes from the EPA health risk assessment paradigm. In a biologic situation where we're dealing with infectious organisms, organisms that may multiply, dose-response is a little bit harder to quantify than if you're just dealing with a chemical agent that does not proliferate. We often find it more useful to use a failure event analysis where we consider the probability of the event occurring before considering the dose-response model. This model gives an overview of the risk analysis process that I just described.