Risk-based Decision Making Definition: A Scoping Review of Food, Agricultural, Environmental, and Medical Literature

Abstract

Risk-based decision making (RBDM) is a term that is used frequently as an aspirational goal in many fields, including health, engineering, environmental science, regulatory and, more recently, food safety. When RBDM is used in the literature, many different types of criteria are used to characterize a decision process as being "risk-based." Like the parable about the blind men and the elephant, everyone is confident they know what RBDM means even though there is no universal definition. The use of RBDM is gaining wide acceptance and implies a level of rigor and focus that many decisionmakers and stakeholders are interested in adopting. However, without one clear definition, there are questions about what a RBDM approach really means. This study summarizes peer-reviewed and gray literature that uses the term "RBDM" from the last 50 years in the agricultural, environmental, and medical areas. The criteria discussed were identified and organized into themes. A foundational definition is proposed to represent the most fundamental use of RBDM in the literature, and three themes covering the additional concepts presented in some of the literature were identified and added as themes within the definition. Results from this research will inform practitioners interested in following the principles of RBDM, and will help guide researchers who are interested in advancing this approach. The most immediate use will be to guide the development of a roadmap for a risk-based food safety system for low- and middle-income countries and to aid the global food safety community in moving toward RBDM.

Keywords: Decision making; food safety; risk-based.