Comparative, collaborative, and integrative risk governance for emerging technologies

Abstract

Various emerging technologies challenge existing governance processes to identify, assess, and manage risk. Though the existing risk-based paradigm has been essential for assessment of many chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear technologies, a complementary approach may be warranted for the early-stage assessment and management challenges of high uncertainty technologies ranging from nanotechnology to synthetic biology to artificial intelligence, among many others. This paper argues for a risk governance approach that integrates quantitative experimental information alongside qualitative expert insight to characterize and balance the risks, benefits, costs, and societal implications of emerging technologies. Various articles in scholarly literature have highlighted differing points of how to address technological uncertainty, and this article builds upon such knowledge to explain how an emerging technology risk governance process should be driven by a multi-stakeholder effort, incorporate various disparate sources of information, review various endpoints and outcomes, and comparatively assess emerging technology performance against existing conventional products in a given application area. At least in the early stages of development when quantitative data for risk assessment remain incomplete or limited, such an approach can be valuable for policymakers and decision makers to evaluate the impact that such technologies may have upon human and environmental health.

A critical juncture for synthetic biology

“…The J Craig Venter Institute's Policy Center is one such example but more are needed. Such coordination offers a greater opportunity to build inroads with the public regarding trust and acceptance for future synthetic biology research and products, as well as identify and preemptively address concerns by government regulators and policymakers .…”

Expert perspectives on potential environmental risks from nanomedicines and adequacy of the current guideline on environmental risk assessment

“…67,122 Linkov et al recently made a strong case on collaborative, adaptive, and integrative risk governance for early assessment of emerging technologies. 123 Furthermore, such risk governance approaches is a step towards responsible innovation. 124 Environmental impacts of nanomedicine are likely to be negligible for some years.…”

Technology Characterisation

“…This is the only way to include complete surprises, which means possible events for which currently no scientific approved 'model of effect' exists. 3 However, approaches for an early assessment of potential hazards and exposure as well as an assessment of different dimensions and forms of lacking knowledge regarding hazards and exposure already exist (Ahrens et al 2005;Giese and von Gleich 2015;Linkov et al 2018;Owen et al 2009;Steinfeldt et al 2007). The underlying hypothesis of technology characterisation is, that the range and the forms of non-knowledge are not 'just there', but are to a large extend produced by the characteristics of the technology.…”