The workshop was held at the Ludwig Maximilian University on Saturday, February 17th 2007. It was organised as part of the EU FP6 funded project "Risk Network".

Eurobarometer surveys from March 2003 and 2006 show that the majority of Europeans have confidence in university scientists involved in biotechnology, in contrast to less than 50% having confidence in their own governments or industry. Moreover, the public would like scientists to communicate their results more extensively. In this respect, communication with the educational and specific public sectors is a key element of success.
Risk communication is a special type of science communication. As it deals with different risk situations, levels of uncertainty and complexities of statistics and probabilities, it is generally difficult to be translated into easily understandable terms. Added to the complexities is the fact that risk communication automatically calls for decisions to be made, both on the personal and societal level. This in turn, brings in other aspects of the decision making process: socio-economic, legal, political and especially moral and ethical. This complexity of the different dimensions and perspectives of risk makes it an explosive mixture where it is often difficult to know what is the main issue, what we want to know and why.
The workshop has looked at elements of communication theory and practice. In addition, the aim was to look at the challenges and to identify possible solutions to overcome the gap between risk theory and practice as they relate to improved science-public/educational dialogue on risk issues. In practical terms this means to find ways for scientists to simplify their findings and issues to be communicated to an extent as demanded by the general public and educators. On the other hand this also means that the various target groups need to clearly vocalise their requirements and become actively involved as a stakeholder in the process of content creation.

The meeting was organised into morning and afternoon sessions. Five presentations were given in the morning, followed up by a general "brainstorming" discussion in the afternoon. The morning session concentrated primarily on presenting different concepts of risk communication: two on issues related to the perception of risk, one on risk communication to journalists, one addressing project communications and one dealing with lessons learned from past food scares. The presentations can be found under www.risk.eusem.com. Each presentation was followed up by a question-answer period.
The afternoon sessions were based upon a mind mapping "brainstorming" concept. The aim was to identify challenges of communicating risk issues, needs of the key stakeholders and possible approaches to resolve the challenges and needs.
The workshop took place in form of "brainstorming" sessions inter-spaced with short presentations on issues related to the workshop objectives as described in the workshop agenda (see annex 1). Workshop participants were seated in a semicircle to allow more intimate interactions. A total of 19 experts participated at the meeting (see annex 1).
All sessions were moderated, with ideas and comments written on a flip chart. The workshop structure was simple: identify needs, resulting challenges and propose likely actions to be undertaken.

The meeting participants came from different backgrounds: representing primarily science communicators, risk experts, social scientists, natural sciences scientists and educators.
Because of the plurality of the backgrounds, many different views were expressed both in the morning and afternoon sessions. This has its advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side it allows mapping of the participants views based on their personal perspectives of the issues being raised. The negative aspect is that it places a responsibility on the evaluator to properly integrate the views into a risk framework that a) clearly indicates the relationships of the views and b) reflects the views of the meeting participants. This is especially true for all one day workshops, where the integration part of the workshop is usually very short because it is done at the end of the day.
Below is an attempt to integrate the workshop output into a consistent and coherent manner. As it is a first attempt, I would be very grateful for comments and suggestions so that the final report can be prepared. I also welcome all last minute inspirations and suggestions.
The workshop findings are divided into two parts. First, the audience responses to the presentations are summarised and second, summary of the brainstorming sessions is presented in form of the needs, challenges and recommended actions.

The five presentations were:
Presentation 1- Public perception
Presentation 2- Food Risk Communication- an alternative consumer- learning based solution
Presentation 3- EC- Project communication- is it merely a public relations activity?
Presentation 4- Cows, Bird Flu, Ferns and the Media
Presentation 5- Food risk management practices: consumer evaluations of past and emerging food safety incidents

As the presentations were available on the internet, only the main points of the morning discussions are summarised.
The general trend in the morning discussions are summarised below, highlighted by a number of key words.
There are many types of risk that can be categorised in a number of ways, for example on the basis whether the risks are chronic as opposed to acute. Change in behaviour patterns of the target groups towards risks is important - this is very much dependent on informed choice as practised by the target group. This is in turn dependent on trust in sources that provide the risk information. It is important to target vulnerable groups. Care needs to be taken with the intended and unintended effects of the risk message that is being communicated. Use of positive role models is encouraged that provide a positive message. Risk communication should be proactive. A number of examples were given where the decision makers repeatedly assumed the public not to be able to deal with facts about a defined treat. This however was always the case of reactive risk communication after a clear treat was identified - in other words risk communication became crisis communication.
In risk communication there is a danger of information overload. This may lead to different coping strategies on the part of the target group in dealing with the risk. For example this may lead to apathy or denial of risks - denial is active (avoidance), whereas apathy can be also active- selectively filtering information as an observer. The trick is to find an appropriate moderate level of risk message level of message to sensitise people to risk. The message must have clarity of purpose and content.
There is a need for continuing risk communication; that is open, transparent and sensitive to regional differences. The ultimate aim is for the target groups to be prepared for when the risk (context) arises. Thus there may be a need for voluntary codes of action.
EU project science (risk) communicator is usually a scientist, journalist, artist, computer expert and entertainer, all in one. There is a clear need for more professional and effective project communication that does not need to be reinvented every 4-5 years. In this respect, the lack of a clear "career path" for science communications is a big hurdle to overcome. Where do risk communicator loyalties lie?

The afternoon sessions were divided into two parts. The first part dealt with the definition of risk and risk actions, the second part addressed the challenges, needs, and suggested actions to overcome the challenges are summarised below, both from the scientific and public/educational perspectives. Despite the different backgrounds of the participants, some common perspectives on risk communication did emerge.

- Good communication is always proactive. It is a very complex and multi-dialectic process. What and how something is being communicated very much depends on the subject, the ability of the communicator and the target group (public, educators etc.) we wish to reach. Communication can be generic or specific. Generic communication addresses the issues of perception and believability (trust) whereas specific communication is subject based- for example addressing issues of GMOs. Risk communication is part of the social fabric of our society.
- Risk communication is part of science communication. However, it implies different ways of action. What defines risk communication is that it is contestable and implies action and decisions. By communicating risk issues, social values are touched often which can affect the perception of the target group. Risk communication is an ongoing dynamic process where uncertainty remains and where closure on the risk issue being considered is highly unlikely.

- Raising awareness of risk amongst the population ( for example Neophobia)
- How do you communicate all the risk attributes?
- How do you prevent overreactions such as panic?
- How deal (prevent) panic, fear and still remain open, balanced, presenting the complete picture?
- Make crisis communication easier (by priming the public to be aware and knowledgeable about risk issues)- where is the connection between risk and crisis communicators?
- How do you motivate the public to take notice of something before it comes up on the radar screen as something dangerous? How do you put it on the radar screen?
- For the educational sector: enable transfer knowledge, values and skills as well as positive behaviour change amongst the students. The challenge is to fit risk communication into this mould.
- How to communicate risks at the right time (not too late, but not unnecessarily early)?
- How to bring a balanced risk-benefit message that still comes across?

- More money, personnel and time to carry out the communication tasks
- More respect and establishment of risk communicators (science communicators) as respectable members of both the scientific and media community.
- Ability to transfer knowledge between "old" and "new" generations of risk communicators.
- A good transfer of recommendations for good risk communication practice coming from the social sciences, communication sciences.
- Because of complexity of issues need a team effort.
- Need to motivate scientists to share key information for risk communication purposes.
- More systematic information on how risk issues have been handled in the past - to facilitate learning from the past.
- Identify what we want to communicate and to whom.

- Education has a number of key defining factors: among them are that it is a long term process, aimed at decoding information to enable transfer knowledge, values and skills. It also aims at positive behaviour change amongst the students.


- how to tap into the risk knowledge if one is not an expert?
- Need for simplicity.
- Need for information that is subject (for ex. human heart disease) and theme (for ex. year of sustainability) related.
- Information that is future related.
- Transparent management for the addressee.

- Encourage children universities, exchange activities between schools and institutes of higher learning.
- Establish closer links to UNESCO.
- Establish closer links to gatekeepers (invite them, network with them).
- Use various communication platforms, such as the internet.
- Create closer links (cross fertilization) between DG research projects and teachers, for example to achieve sustainable exploitation of resources.
- Create specific priorities and action plan.
- Get the right experts to do the job- do not reinvent the wheel.

- Dealing with risky issues is not just a decision making problem of politicians or risk managers, as typically addressed by risk governance (risk assessment, risk management and risk communication).
- Risk and risk communication involves issues of perception, motivation and is a focus for civil activity. Thus one needs to address risk in terms of risk to individuals and to the society. Risk can thus be seen as a mobilising force for the general population.
- Risk involves issues of citizen responsibility and voluntary guidelines of behaviour - so it has a personal and societal dimension- where does my responsibility to take notice and react begin and end, same for the society.
- Ethics and morality are linked to risk and decision making.
- There are three key prerequisites in communicating risk issues. First is to clearly identify what do we want to communicate and to whom. The second prerequisite is to clearly define how far does risk communicator responsibility to communicate emerging risk go in order to make it noticed by the key stakeholders. Finally, it needs to be clearly defined where does risk communicators' responsibility begin and end in making the risk issues understandable to the chosen target group (for example educators), and where does the target group's (for example educators) responsibility take over.
- Dealing with risk issues in a balanced, complete, fair, sensitive and effective manner (not overstating or understating risk issues) is also a responsibility of the risk communicator.
- What are the conditions of success to communicate risk issues in an appropriate manner to educators and the general public? Who should be involved?
- By viewing and accepting risk as a societal phenomenon rather than being in the domain of the decision makers only, may help to better communicate issues of uncertainty to selected target groups
- Risk is complex - thus there is a need for coordinated action to bring together the right team of experts to address the challenges and needs.

END