ENhanced COMmunication in Risk ANalysis (ENCOMRAN)

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In general, good communication skills are essential in order to allow others and yourself to understand information more accurately and quickly and avoid misunderstandings, this is also true in the communication between risk managers and assessors. Communication within the risk analysis process should be characterised by openness and transparency.

Risk communication towards consumers and other stakeholders has been extensively studied (e.g., Frewer et al. (Frewer et al., 2016)) while the communication between risk assessors and risk managers is  less well described. Within the EFSA financed partnering grant project COMRISK (“Communication inside Risk Assessment and Risk Management”,  financed  through  a  Partnering  Grant  GA/EFSA/AFSCO/2017/01-GA05 awarded  by EFSA , Call  reference  GP/EFSA/AFSCO/2017/01) the interaction between risk managers and assessors within the four Member States, Sweden, Finland, Germany and the Netherlands, was studied, focusing on identifying current practices and challenges in the communication between risk assessors and risk managers during the risk analysis process. Based on the results from COMRISK it is evident that lack of communication seldom is a result of formal constraints or agreements. Instead, there are perceived constraints or traditions that appear to be possible underlying factors leading to scarce or poor communication between risk assessors and risk managers. Thus, it is essential that both risk assessors and risk managers acknowledge the crucial importance of communication between them. Furthermore, it has been suggested that a formal systematic process may facilitate communication during the risk analysis.

ENCOMRAN’s main objective is to build risk communication capacity by studying communication between risk assessors and risk managers in more depth, getting more European countries involved (compared to within previous projects) and promoting common guidelines for open and transparent risk communication. ‘European countries’ in this sense are the following: EU MSs, EU candidate countries and EFTA MSs with risk assessment and risk management in separate roles.

The European wide survey, performed in the form of a web-based questionnaire, forms the basis of ENCOMRAN and the in-depth analysis of data obtained from the survey aim to enable knowledge transfer not only between the partners included in the ENCOMRAN consortium but also other European countries. The survey will include European countries with separation between risk management and risk assessment.