Introduction: the Global Risk Arena, Technological Systems and This Book

The global citizen of the twenty-first century faces a wide spectrum of risks, such as from transportation, ionizing radiation, the propagation of contagious diseases, terrorism, natural disasters, and global climate change. Some of them, for instance the risk of a motorcycle accident, affect only individuals and have merely occasional direct impacts on society. Nevertheless the accumulation of these individual risks is leading to major long-term changes in risk patterns.