Enhancing Risk Communication: Interactive and Web-Hosted Tools for Visualising Quantitative Risk and Reliability

Conveying risk and reliability metrics to non-experts is hard because probabilities and expected monetary losses often lie far outside everyday intuition. This paper looks at interactive web-hosted tools as a means to alleviate this problem by comparing three existing tools to distil design guidance: a digital handbook for reliability predictions in space applications, a cloud inspection-planning app for deteriorating structures, and a municipal fire-risk platform. Each tool is evaluated against six recurrent themes: visualisation, interactivity, accessibility, maintainability, gamification, personalisation. Findings show that rich graphics plus direct parameter control are the entry ticket for engagement, while responsive web delivery and automated versioning keep analyses current and traceable. Light gamified cues (progress bars) and context-aware content (local response times) further motivate users but must be applied sparingly to preserve credibility and privacy. We outline an evolutionary path from searchable digital handbooks through parameter-driven calculators to map-centred dashboards and demonstrate that well-crafted interactivity transforms static risk reports into exploratory tools that enable genuinely risk-informed decisions across diverse engineering domains.