This workshop brings together CSCW scholars of various domains, such as medicine and healthcare, disaster planning, and public safety, to consider different dimensions of risk work and their implications on computing. Risk work encompasses the practices through which workers assess, manage, and mitigate potential harms in situations framed by uncertainty. In the face of a pervasive rhetoric of crisis, risk work is expanding and evolving as workers and laypeople are increasingly charged with preventing, predicting, and communicating risks. The changing landscape of risk work is coupled with expanding technical infrastructure that shapes communication, determines information sharing, and includes technologies of data collection and prediction. In this workshop, we aim to examine the challenges and opportunities in designing computing systems that support risk work in order to develop a research agenda for studying the future of risk work. Participants will come ready to present on case studies of risk work. We will then engage in collaborative mapping exercises and design practices to identify both the potential and pitfalls of technologies to support risk work. The workshop will culminate in a shared research agenda and design strategies for the future of computing in risk work contexts.
* This research is supported by National Science Foundation (NSF) #2211360.
* This paper is a workshop proposal, which will be held in CSCW 2025.