In contrast to the rich and often streamlined literature on the process of risk analysis, the concepts grounding the practice are under-theorised. When explicitly treated, theorists’ analyses diverge. On the one hand, a dominant view in risk analysis is to treat risk and safety as relatively straightforward objective natural concepts, determined by physical facts and thus fitted for scientific study. On the other hand, theorists from the social sciences argue that risk is a ‘social construct’, a subjective social feature rather than a feature of the objective reality.