Workshop 5 - Introduction to FDA-iRISK® 4.2: A Comparative Risk Assessment Tool with New Features and Case Studies

Workshop Registration Fees

  • Members $625.00
  • Non-Members $725.00
  • Student TBD
  • Late-fee $75.00

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IAFP Workshop Cancellation Policy:  Registration fees, less a $100 administration fee and any
applicable bank charges, will be refunded for written cancellations received by June 29, 2023.  No
refunds will be made after June 29, however, the registration may be transferred to a colleague
who is NOT currently registered with written notification.  Registrations cannot be carried to any
future meetings.

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Other:  Any modifications to payment method will incur a $25 processing fee.

Refunds will be processed when received.

Workshop rates are available for students upon request. 

Workshop Description

Risk assessments predict risk and changes in risk, to inform food-safety decisions.  FDA-iRISK 4.2 – the latest, enhanced version – is a Web-based, comparative risk-assessment tool available to the public, without cost (https://irisk.foodrisk.org/). This peer-reviewed tool has many built-in functions and automated features that enable users to conduct fully probabilistic risk assessments efficiently. It enables users to build, view, and share scenarios that reflect their real-world or theoretical food-safety issues.  New and enhanced features in FDA-iRISK 4.2 include, for example, substantial capacities with which users can explicitly model probabilistic uncertainty and variability (by second-order Monte Carlo simulation), incorporate predictive growth or inactivation models, and access features such as modeling the effect of sampling on risk reduction, streamlined sensitivity analysis, improved data importing, and reporting the proportion of servings that exceed a concentration threshold.

This workshop will build upon the positive feedback we received from the 2019 IAFP workshop (on v4.0).  It will provide a guided, hands-on opportunity to explore FDA-iRISK 4.2, build and run quantitative risk assessment models.  Participants will learn how to use FDA-iRISK 4.2 to: (1) rank food-safety risks from microbial and chemical hazards, and (2) predict effectiveness of interventions applied at any points from farm to table (predict changes in contamination and illness from the interventions), and to do so more easily with the new feature on streamlined sensitivity analysis. The workshop will introduce attendees to advanced features, as well as illustrate the capacity of FDA-iRISK 4.2 to store evidence for risk scenarios in a consistent, structured, and systematic fashion. Instructors will present case studies to demonstrate the application of FDA-iRISK 4.2 as both a Web-based database and a quantitative risk-assessment tool in real-world scenarios that are explored by stakeholders, including government agencies and industry. 

Workshop participants are asked to bring a laptop or a tablet for hands-on exercises. Internet connection required to access FDA-iRISK 4.2 will be provided by IAFP (no other software is needed).

Who Should Attend

Food-safety professionals from academia, industry, and government who have an interest in tools and applications of quantitative risk assessment, without the prerequisite of (extensive) mathematical modeling experience.

Workshop Instructors

  • Yuhuan Chen, FDA-CFSAN, College Park, MD, USA
  • Gregory Paoli, Risk Sciences International, Ottawa, ON, Canada
  • Todd Ruthman, Risk Sciences International, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Workshop Organizers

  • Yuhuan Chen, FDA-CFSAN, College Park, MD, USA