Risk and Uncertainty Communication
Abstract
This review briefly examines the vast range of techniques used to communicate risk assessments arising from statistical analysis. After discussing essential psychological and sociological issues, I focus on individual health risks and relevant research on communicating numbers, verbal expressions, graphics, and conveying deeper uncertainty. I then consider practice in a selection of diverse case studies, including gambling, the benefits and risks of pharmaceuticals, weather forecasting, natural hazards, climate change, environmental exposures, security and intelligence, industrial reliability, and catastrophic national and global risks. There are some tentative final conclusions, but the primary message is to acknowledge expert guidance, be clear about objectives, and work closely with intended audiences.
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Humans in general suffer from a variety of cognitive biases, some of which hinder our understanding of uncertainty.
“research shows that humans in general suffer from a variety of cognitive biases, some of which hinder our understanding of uncertainty [60,107,115].”
From Uncertainty as a Form of Transparency: Measuring, Communicating, and Using Uncertainty (2021) · cites this paper as [115]
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“The second category of uncertainty is comprised of those uncertainties that cannot be quantified directly, e.g., ontological (Spiegelhalter, 2017), ambiguity or true uncertainty (Knight, 2012), and second-order uncertainty (Bach et al., 2009).”
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“It can also be done qualitatively, e.g. by accompanying the subjective probability with a qualitative expression of the assessors’ degree of confidence in their assessment of that probability (Spiegelhalter, 2017).”
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“However, making decisions based on averaged causal quantities can be misleading and, in some applications, even dangerous (Spiegelhalter, 2017; van der Bles et al., 2019).”
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“Participants answered the four questions below about (1) themselves, (2) an average 22-year-old in their state who is generally in good health, and (3) an average 78-year-old in their state who is generally in good health (referred to as target type).”
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“…also considerable differences in how uncertainty is managed or even identified between disciplines—dealing with uncertainty about a medical prognosis on an individual scale is different from managing hurricanes (Spiegelhalter 2008, 2017; Joslyn and Savelli 2010; Stephens et al. 2012; Beven 2016).”
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“Media trust shapes the audience selection of news (Tsfati & Cappella, 2003) as well as the potential of information to have an influence: trusted sources affect our opinions and behaviors whereas non-trusted sources are less likely to do so (e.g., Ladd, 2012; Spiegelhalter, 2017).”
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“16,17 A previous analysis investigated the association of self-reported MVPA and objectively measured total PA with life expectancy, showing high vs. low categories of PA were associated with a 3 (cid:1) 5 year difference in life expectancy at 45 years of age.”
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“Previous examples include epistemic uncertainty (about facts, numbers, and science) [20] or aleatory uncertainty (inevitable unpredictability of the future due to unforeseeable factors, commonly used in statistical modeling of risk) [21].”
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“001 1/100 000 Spiegelhalter et al.(33) Probability intervals and terminology used by the inter-governmental panel for climate change Virtually certain 99–100 Extremely likely 95–100 Very likely 90–100 Likely 66–100 More likely than not 50–100 About as likely as not 33–66 Unlikely 0–33 Very unlikely 0–10 Exceptionally…”
BackgroundInfluentialMultiple Hazard Uncertainty Visualization Challenges and Paths Forward
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“The question of how best to communicate risk has received a lot of attention (Spiegelhalter, 2017; Trevena et al., 2013; Zipkin et al., 2014).”
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Bholat, D., Broughton, N., Parker, A., Termeer, J., & Walczak, E. J. (2018) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3233695 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“…have found that making information relevant to individual circumstances can increase engagement (Garner 2005; Behavioural Insights Team 2012), and that expressing financial costs in pound values instead of percentages can improve comprehension (Gigerenzer and Edwards 2003; Spiegelhalter 2017).”
A review of uncertainty visualization errors: Working memory as an explanatory theory
Padilla, L. M. K., Castro, S., & Hosseinpour, H. (2021) · The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivation · doi:10.1016/bs.plm.2021.03.001 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Risk Assessment of Chemical Mixtures in Foods: A Comprehensive Methodological and Regulatory Review
Combarros, R. G., García, M. G., Blanco-Díaz, G. D., Bravo, K. S., Moya, J. L. R., & López-Sánchez, J. I. (2026) · Foods · doi:10.3390/foods15020244 · Cited by 15
“…clear narratives, contribution plots and intuitive analogies to explain mixture metrics and uncertainty while maintaining scientific accuracy, thereby supporting informed, transparent decision-making on the management of chemical “cocktails” in food and other exposure contexts [87,89,90,109].”
InfluentialSanderson, S. C., & Inouye, M. (2025) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-025-02200-x · Cited by 15 · see citing works
Farmer, G. D., Pearson, M., Skylark, W., Freeman, A., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2021) · Cancer Medicine · doi:10.1002/cam4.4072 · Cited by 15 · see citing works
“We also did not foresee that, although recommended in the risk communication literature, 13,28,29 icon arrays would be deemed to be distressingly morbid when human-shaped.”
BackgroundSelf-citationAmericans’ Views of Fusion Energy: Implications for Sustainable Public Support
Gupta, K., Jenkins-Smith, H., Ripberger, J., Silva, C. L., Fox, A., & Livingston, W. (2024) · Fusion science and technology · doi:10.1080/15361055.2024.2328457 · Cited by 14
“15] While nuclear fission continues to provide the largest share of clean energy for the U.S. grid, the enduring legacy of nuclear accidents and elevated risk perceptions have made it difficult to site nuclear facilities.”
Multiple models for outbreak decision support in the face of uncertainty
Shea, K., Borchering, R., Probert, W., Howerton, E., Bogich, T., Li, S.-L., van Panhuis, W. V., Viboud, C., Aguás, R., Belov, A., et al. (2023) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · doi:10.1073/pnas.2207537120 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“The ensemble provided valuable risk quantification for decision making (20) since all models provided projections as probability distributions.”
Communication of Statistics and Evidence in Times of Crisis
Schneider, C., Kerr, J. R., Dryhurst, S., & Aston, J. (2023) · Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application · doi:10.1146/annurev-statistics-040722-052011 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“One clear way to avoid the effects of such framing is to provide the statistic from both sides (Gigerenzer, 2014; Spiegelhalter, 2017).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialCommunicating personalised risks from COVID-19: guidelines from an empirical studyPreprint
Freeman, A., Kerr, J. R., Recchia, G., Schneider, C., Lawrence, A. C. E., Finikarides, L., Luoni, G., Dryhurst, S., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2020) · medRxiv · doi:10.1101/2020.10.05.20206961 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“Numbers on their own do not convey a perception of quantity – they need to be given context, particularly when the numbers are small [29].”
BackgroundSelf-citationInterpretable Machine Learning for Privacy-Preserving Pervasive Systems
Baron, B., & Musolesi, M. (2017) · IEEE pervasive computing · doi:10.1109/mprv.2019.2918540 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
“Indeed, risk itself is difficult to communicate (see for instance [18]).”
BackgroundData-driven recommendations for enhancing real-time natural hazard warnings
Saunders, K. R., Forbes, O., Hopf, J. K., Patterson, C. R., Vollert, S. A., Brown, K., Browning, R., Canizares, M. A., Cottrell, R. S., Li, L., et al. (2025) · One Earth · doi:10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101274 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Runge, M. C., Shea, K., Howerton, E., Yan, K.-T., Hochheiser, H., Rosenstrom, E. T., Probert, W., Borchering, R., Marathe, M., Lewis, B., et al. (2024) · Epidemics · doi:10.1016/j.epidem.2024.100775 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“Key challenges include communication of the nuances of scenario projections to lay audiences (as different from forecasts), and visualization of uncertainty (Kamal et al., 2021; Hullman et al., 2019; Hägele et al., 2022; Spiegelhalter, 2017).”
Rosen, J., Agrawal, N., Flum, D., & Liao, J. M. (2021) · Annals of Surgery · doi:10.1097/sla.0000000000005255 · Cited by 13
Communicating personalized risks from COVID-19: guidelines from an empirical study
Freeman, A., Kerr, J. R., Recchia, G., Schneider, C., Lawrence, A. C. E., Finikarides, L., Luoni, G., Dryhurst, S., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2021) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.201721 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“Numbers on their own do not convey a perception of quantity—they need to be given context, particularly when the numbers are small [29].”
BackgroundSelf-citationSelf-reported walking pace, polygenic risk scores and risk of coronary artery disease in UK biobank.
Zaccardi, F., Timmins, I., Goldney, J., Dudbridge, F., Dempsey, P., Davies, M., Khunti, K., & Yates, T. (2022) · NMCD. Nutrition Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases · doi:10.1016/j.numecd.2022.08.021 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Simple methods for improving the communication of uncertainty in species’ temporal trends
Pescott, O., Stroh, P. A., Humphrey, T., & Walker, K. (2022) · Ecological Indicators · doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2022.109117 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Threlkeld, R., Ashiku, L., Canfield, C., Shank, D. B., Schnitzler, M., Lentine, K., Axelrod, D., Battineni, A. C. R., Randall, H., & Dagli, C. (2021) · Current Transplantation Reports · doi:10.1007/s40472-021-00351-0 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
McDowell, M., & Kause, A. (2021) · Risk Analysis · doi:10.1111/risa.13739 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“communicating uncertainty is that many of the techniques that have been developed have not been empirically tested or compared for communicating different types of uncertainty (Spiegelhalter, 2017; van der Bles et al., 2019).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSchäfer, U., Sipos, L., & Müller-Birn, C. (2025) · Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact. · doi:10.1145/3757451 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“") with a fixed denominator of 100 [28, 148, 164].”
Dhungana, A., Doyle, E. H., McDonald, G. W., & Prasanna, R. (2025) · International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction · doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105260 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Self-reported walking pace and 10-year cause-specific mortality: A UK biobank investigation.
Goldney, J., Dempsey, P., Henson, J., Rowlands, A., Bhattacharjee, A., Chudasama, Y. V., Razieh, C., Laukkanen, J., Davies, M. J., Khunti, K., et al. (2023) · Progress in cardiovascular diseases · doi:10.1016/j.pcad.2023.09.003 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
McCartney, M., Sullivan, F., & Heneghan, C. (2020) · BMJ evidence-based medicine · doi:10.1136/bmjebm-2020-111541 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Berryessa, C. M., & Caplan, J. M. (2020) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02222 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
“As individuals have their own perspectives on risk communication, risk information in relation to crime and public safety can often take on different forms (Spiegelhalter, 2017; Lundgren and McMakin, 2018).”
BackgroundThorneloe, R., Hall, L., Walter, F., Side, L., Lloyd, K., & Smith, S. (2019) · Cancer Prevention Research · doi:10.1158/1940-6207.capr-19-0424 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“Although these aids frame numerical information using evidence-based approaches (31), they are lengthy documents that contain complex terminology.”
McCrorie, A., Chen, J.-W., Weller, R. R., McGlade, K., Donnelly, C., & Shiri, R. (2018) · Cogent Medicine · doi:10.1080/2331205x.2018.1483591 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“Icon array was chosen as the infographic to test due to its ability to unambiguously represent part-to-whole relationships while also negating the effects of denominator neglect (Spiegelhalter, 2017; Spiegelhalter, Pearson, & Short, 2011).”
Dynamic calibration with approximate Bayesian computation for a microsimulation of disease spread
Asher, M., Lomax, N., Morrissey, K., Spooner, F., & Malleson, N. (2023) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/s41598-023-35580-z · Cited by 10
Effects of flood hazard visualization format on house purchasing decisions
Dobson, B., Miles-Wilson, J., Gilchrist, I., Leslie, D. S., & Wagener, T. (2018) · Urban Water Journal · doi:10.1080/1573062x.2018.1537370 · Cited by 10
“Gestalt principles) that facilitate the perception and interpretation of visual scenes (e.g. Pinker 1990; Carpenter and Shah, 1998; Kelleher and Wagener 2011; Spiegelhalter 2017), but which have been largely overlooked or underused by risk communicators.”
BackgroundSarma, A., Hedayati, M., & Kay, M. (2025) · International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3713725 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“…is the quantifiable uncertainty arising due to statistical variability, 2 which we will refer to as probabilistic uncertainty ; the other is the “un-certainty about the modeling process as a description of reality” [57] which, following Ferson and Siegrist [12], we will refer to as incertitude .”
Takoutsing, B., Heuvelink, G., Aynekulu, E., & Shepherd, K. (2024) · Precision Agriculture · doi:10.1007/s11119-024-10200-6 · Cited by 9
“…in critical situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic (McCabe et al., 2021 ), it becomes evident that scientists often do not convey uncertainty through appropriate communication channels or present in a format easily digestible by farmers for integration into decision-making (Spiegelhalter, 2017 ).”
- Authors
- Spiegelhalter, D.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Spiegelhalter, David
- ORCID
- Spiegelhalter, David
- Venue
- Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application
- Publisher
- Annual Reviews
- Published
- 2017-03-07
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 31-60
- ISSN
- 2326-8298 (ISSN-L)
- 2326-831X
- OpenAlex
- W2529483981
- Cited by
- 248
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 33 · 2025: 35 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 16
- FWCI
- 4.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Patient-Provider Communication in Healthcare
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Climate Change Communication and Perception
- Keywords
- risk communication, uncertainty communication, risk assessment, health risks, gambling, weather forecasting, natural hazards, climate change, environmental exposure, production reliability, catastrophic risk, expert guidance, audience understanding
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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