Uncertainties in risk tolerability

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:282307

Cassidy, K

The management of risk is now recognized as central to the effective and efficient operation of industry and commerce and is widely practiced. Risk Management has economic, political and human dimensions, which in all cases involve pivotal judgments relating to the acceptability or (as appropriate) tolerability of the criteria which underpin the executive decisions and actions in the risk management process. How robust are the techniques used to arrive at such judgments? And how can existing variations in tolerability criteria be explained or justified? The developing methodologies contain many uncertainties (for example, selection of failure cases from a range of possibilities; failure possibilities in each case; scale of modeling and consequence uncertainties; model validation; parameter values of the models used; uncertainties in enhancing and mitigating factors). How far do these uncertainties affect the validity of risk management decisions? And how sensitive are these decisions to aspects of uncertainty? How far do the influences affecting public perception of the type, nature and magnitude of any risks affect the nature of risk management? (For example, issues such as voluntary vs involuntary exposure; natural vs man-made risks, perceptions of personal control, familiarity, perceptions of benefit or disbenefit, the nature of the hazard, the nature of the threat, the special vulnerability of sensitive groups, public perceptions of comparators, reversibility of effects, all may be felt to influence significantly the decision making process.) Expression and communication of risk (particularly methods of calculating and expressing societal risk) may compound any problems.

• OSTI ID: 282307
• Report Number(s): CONF-9505224--; ISBN 1-56555-079-X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
DATA COVARIANCES
DECISION MAKING
EMERGENCY PLANS
PROBABILITY
RISK ASSESSMENT