This comprehensive book looks at COVID-19, along with other recent infectious disease outbreaks, with the broad aim of providing constructive lessons and critical reflections from across a wide range of perspectives and disciplinary interests within the risk analysis field.

The chapters in this edited volume probe the roles of risk communication, risk perception, and risk science in helping to manage the ever-growing pandemic that was declared a public health emergency of international concern in the beginning of 2020. A few chapters in the book also include relevant content discussing past disease outbreaks, such as Zika, Ebola and MERS-CoV. This book distils past and present knowledge, appraises current responses, introduces new ideas and data, and offers key recommendations, which will help illuminate different aspects of the global health crisis. It also explores how different constructive insights offered from a ‘risk perspective’ might inform decisions on how best to proceed in response as the pandemic continues.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Risk Research.