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AbstractLempert and Turner contribute importantly to the design of decision‐analytical tools for wicked policy issues by acknowledging the centrality of socially determined and often irreconcilable worldviews. Their point of departure is application of the DMDU approach (decision making under deep uncertainty) separately for each contending worldview as postulated by cultural theory. This allows stakeholders to maintain solidarity with their social or organizational value communities, an important consideration or even prerequisite for robust policy compromises. Drawing from a codesign process in Italy, this commentary suggests that the Lempert and Turner multiworldview approach can be useful for aiding stakeholder deliberation by representing alternative problem framings or worldviews, displaying the implications of acting on one framing when viewed from the others, and identifying compromise solutions robust across the framings. The challenge is to operationalize the Lempert and Turner approach, a challenge well worth pursuing given the increasingly intractable and "wicked" nature of today's policy issues.

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is an important methodology for assessing the risks of complex technologies. This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of PRA. Its application is explored in three different settings: adversarial policy processes, regulatory/licensing procedures, and plant safety audits. It is concluded that PRA is a valuable tool for auditing safety precautions of existing or planned technologies, especially when it is carried out as an interactive process involving designers and plant personnel who are familiar with actual, everyday operations. PRA has not proven to be as well‐suited in providing absolute risk estimates in public‐policy debates concerning the acceptability of a technology, or for the licensing and regulatory procedures. The reasons for this are discussed.

This article examines the potential of pre‐ and post‐disaster instruments for funding disaster response and recovery and for creating incentives for flood loss mitigation in countries with emerging or transition economies. As a concrete case, we discuss the disaster recovery arrangements following the 1997 flood disaster in Poland. We examine the advantages and limitations of hedging instruments, which are instruments for transferring the risk to investors either through insurance or capital market‐based securities. We compare these mechanisms with financing instruments, whereby the government sets aside funds prior to a disaster or taps its own funding sources after the event occurs. We show how hedging instruments can be designed to create incentives for the mitigation of damage to public infrastructure using the flood proofing of a water‐treatment plant on the hypothetical Topping River as an illustrative example. We conclude that hedging instruments can be an attractive alternative to financing instruments that have been traditionally used in the poorer, emerging‐economy countries to fund disaster recovery. Since very poor countries are likely to have difficulty paying the price of protection prior to a disaster, we suggest that international lending institutions consider innovations for subsidizing these payments.

Environmental hazards do not respect international boundaries. In this volume, distinguished international researchers make a significant contribution to the understanding and management of transboundary environmental risks.The transboundary risk topics addressed highlight the key political, economic, social and cultural issues of our times, such as how transboundary risks are constructed, how they are communicated within and between countries, how the authorities can build trust in political management processes, and what forms of democratic risk management institutions are appropriate.Useful practical lessons on the management of transboundary risk at the national and international levels are drawn from the case studies. The volume provides valuable evidence and analysis for those working on international environmental issues and all aspects of risk management.

With escalating costs of flood mitigation and relief, a challenge for the Hungarian government is to develop a flood mitigation and insurance/relief system that is viewed as efficient and fair by the many stakeholders involved. To aid policymakers in this task, this article reports on a recent study to elicit stakeholder views on flood risk management in the Upper Tisza Basin, including views on appropriate means of reducing losses and for transferring the residual losses from the direct victims to taxpayers or an insurance pool. This study is part of a project to develop an integrated approach to flood risk management coordinated by the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in collaboration with Swedish and Hungarian researchers. The discussion begins by describing the background of flood risk management problems in the Upper Tisza Basin. The results of interviews carried out with selected key stakeholders and the results of a public survey eliciting views on flood risk management are reported. The final section draws conclusions on incorporating stakeholder views into a flood risk management model, which will be used to illustrate policy paths at an upcoming stakeholder workshop. The conclusions are also of direct interest to Hungarian policymakers.