Faucher Colette - Risk and Cognition

Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

Jean-Marc Mercantini 1

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Abstract

The introduction chapter is a discussion about the title of the book. Why having associated the concepts of Risk and Cognition? What are the implications of this association? The responses to these questions have strong consequences on how to apprehend critical problems that emerge (or could emerge) within various activity domains. The chapter presents the two concepts of risk and cognition, and it highlights and analyses relations linking them. The complexity of the risk concept is tackled via historical, ontological and conceptual approaches. The cognition concept is defined and the filiation bonds between Cognition, Cognitive Science, Cognitive Engineering and Knowledge Engineering are presented. The set of cognition concepts defines a coherent field of interdisciplinary knowledge (scientific, methodological and technical), which provides operational tools for the analysis and the design of complex systems (or organizations) where risks are prominent.

The acceleration of the human activity evolution in a context of globalization, open markets, and scientific and technical progress, leads to in-depth changes of modern societies, and is responsible for increasingly complex situations. These situations may involve the cooperation and the collaboration of individuals from diverse cultures (e.g. social background, professional background, academic background, nationality) as well as the cooperation and the collaboration of individuals with intelligent machines. In parallel to the acceleration of these changes, modern societies show an increased aversion to the new risks that emerge from professional, domestic and leisure activities. In this context, risk situations inherit this complexity and they may be considered to be the results of deviations from expected behaviours of systems, which involve humans, technical components, organizations and a specific environment. Their apprehension and mastery require understanding the human behaviours (individual or group basis) facing risks, and their study requires therefore mobilizing behavioural sciences, social sciences, life sciences and engineering sciences. The objective of this introduction chapter is to present the risk and cognition concepts and to highlight and analyse relations linking them. The first part of the chapter aims to identify the contours of the risk concept. The literature review highlights a concept of great complexity being the subject of a large number of research works in a variety of disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, mathematics and engineering sciences. This strong mobilization of sciences is consistent to the growing anxieties of modern societies facing a future full of uncertainties and unknowns, and the feeling of not having the necessary tools for its control. Each of these disciplines brings different and complementary views of the risk concept, revealing different aspects of its complexity and its links with cognition. The second part of the chapter is dedicated to the concept of cognition as well as to sciences that study it and take it into account to design and build new systems more efficient and smarter. On one hand, considering the relationships linking the concepts of risk and cognition and, on the other hand, considering the operational tools proposed by cognitive engineering for designing and developing systems, it is possible to envisage new systems where risks may be considered as natural phenomena, and may be taken into account in the early stages of the design process, to provide these systems with capabilities for anticipation, adaptation and resilience. The third part of the chapter presents the topics covered by this book and the way they are treated by the authors. Each chapter is described by a short abstract that gives a preview of the tackled problems and implemented methodologies to elaborate coherent solutions.