On 22 January 2020, a statement from the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that there is a high risk of an outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus in China. To respond the emergency, on the same day, the Journal of Risk Analysis and Crisis Response (JRACR) decided to edit and publish a special issue on Risk Analysis and Crisis Management for Epidemic Diseases, meanwhile Chongfu Huang (Professor of Beijing Normal University) and Fengying Zhang (Deputy Dean of the West China School of Nursing at Sichuan University) were assigned to be the guest editors.

In order to share the papers for the special issue as soon as possible, they will be published in regular issues with a distinction of COVID-19 topic. In this issue, two papers are in COVID-19 topic. The first paper “The Diamond Princess Cruise: An Accidentally Experimental Model of Virus Pneumonia” by Liyuan Liu, introduces infection process and mechanism of COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess Cruise. The second paper “Risk Analysis and Crisis Management of Viral Pneumonia in Wuhan” by Weixi Xu and Xuanhua Xu, attempts to use the wisdom of the super large groups in the social network, and will be divided into two parts to elaborate, exploring the group decision-making scheme under the big data and the risk analysis under different schemes. Both of the contributions are written in Chinese with English abstracts.

Other four papers, two contributions in English and two contributions in Chinese with English abstracts, can be divided into four topics: fire risk assessment, risk decision making, earthquake risk analysis, and credit risk analysis. “Discussing the Need to Manage Uncertainty Relating to Users in Road Tunnel Fire Risk Assessment” by Panagiotis Ntzeremes et al. aims to discuss current ways of representing users’ uncertainty as well as to introduce the importance of distinguishing these representations in the wider context of risk assessment in road tunnel fire. Finite investment decision making using real market risk (non-diversifiable risk) was undertaken in paper “Kernel Density Estimation of White Noise for Non-diversifiable Risk in Decision Making” by Emma Anyika et al. to derive probability estimates of the non-diversifiable risks of the various stocks based on a finite data sample. The paper “Review the Parameters of Historical Strong Earthquakes in Tianshui and its Surrounding Areas” by Qing Wu, proposed an elliptical intensity distribution model based on modern events with both instrument records and macro investigation records that suitable for the western region of China, then estimated the historical strong earthquake parameters in Tianshui and its surrounding areas. There is one paper in credit risk analysis. The paper “Research on the Contagion Mechanism of Associated Credit Risk in the Supply Chain” by Xiaofeng Xie et al. reveals the contagion mechanism of the associated credit risk in the supply chain based on multiple perspectives such as the origin, contagion path and basic characteristics of the associated credit risk in the supply chain, which is helpful for the supervision authorities to strengthen the management of the enterprise credit risk in the supply chain.

We sincerely thank the referees for their strong support and kind help. Thanks to all the authors for their submissions. Particularly, thanks to Prof. Mu Zhang, being technology editor, and thanks to Prof. Junxiang Zhang, Manager of Journal of Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, they devoted their time in overseeing the reviews.