A 'people-centered' concept of society-wide risk management

A methodology for society-wide risk management is proposed which would start by estimating the totality of real risk to the members of the society and break this down into all those components or categories which make an appreciable contribution to the total - say a minimum of 1%. Obviously, any component contributing less than this minimum should receive little attention, since even its complete elimination would have a neglible effect. Among the important components and categories, the magnitude and the 'tractability' would be decisive in the amount of effort which would be devoted to their reduction. These factors would combine in the estimated cost of saving an extra statistical life in that activity. Most effort should be devoted to those activities with the lowest such index; the general law of diminishing returns would make the allocation dynamic rather than fixed