Amid a number of risk management and regulatory failures in the late 1990s, several academics proposed to the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research to create an International Risk Governance Council.
In June 2003, IRGC was formally founded in Geneva as a private foundation, with Prof. José Mariano Gago as first chairman of the Foundation Board, Prof. Granger Morgan as first chairman of the Scientific and Technical Council and Prof. Wolfgang Kröger as founding director [REF].