Risk Assessment - Marvin Rausand

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a statement about the uncertainty regarding the outcome of the investment. This interpretation of the word risk is not relevant for this book, which is concerned exclusively with adverse outcomes. In general, events that harm only intangible assets (e.g. finances, reputation, and goodwill) are not covered in the book, unless this (intangible) harm is associated to an event harming a tangible asset.

      The main focus of the book is risk assessment per se, not how the results from the assessment may be used or misused, but some issues related to risk management are discussed briefly in Chapter 7.

      The book is mainly focused on the study of major accident risk. Many of the methods described may be used to analyze and prevent minor accidents, such as occupational accidents, but this is not the main focus of the book. Risk related to deliberate actions, such as sabotage and cyberattacks, is not a main focus of the book, but an introduction to this increasing problem is given in Chapter 17. Environmental risk and resilience are likewise treated only very briefly.

      1 1.1 Section 1.2 describes some trends that change risk. Take some time to reflect on other technological trends that can increase or reduce risk.

      2 1.2 An important basis for all risk analyses is a good understanding of failures and accidents that have occurred earlier. Has there been any recent examples of major accidents? Read about the accidents and identify points that we can learn from to avoid future accidents.

      3 1.3 Look for accident investigation reports from one of the accidents that are listed in Table 1.1 . In many cases, reports can be found on the Internet. Review the report and see what causes are identified and whether they are related to technical failures, human errors, or organizational aspects.

      4 1.4 On the Internet, numerous examples of risk analyses and risk assessments can be found. Search for examples and look at what the content is and what the scope of the analysis is.

      5 1.5 Look for examples of legislation, guidelines or standards that require risk assessment in your own country.

      1 Bazovsky, I. (1961). Reliability Theory and Practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice‐Hall.

      2 Bernstein, P.L. (1998). Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

      3 Fleming, K.N. (1975). A Reliability Model for Common Mode Failures in Redundant Safety Systems. Tech. Rep. GA‐A13284. San Diego, CA: General Atomic Company.

      4 Heinrich, H.W. (1931). Industrial Accident Prevention: A Scientific Approach. New York: McGraw‐Hill.

      5 Hopkins, A. (2000). Lessons from Longford: The Esso Gas Plant Explosion. Sydney: CCH Australia.

      6 Kletz, T. (2001). Learning from Accidents, 3e. Abington: Routledge.

      7 Knight, F.H. (1921). Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

      8 Macza, M. (2008). A Canadian perspective of the history of process safety management legislation. 8th International Symposium on Programmable Electronic Systems in Safety‐Related Applications, Cologne, Germany.

      9 Mannan, S. (ed.) (2012). Lee's Loss Prevention in the Process Industries: Hazard Identification, Assessment and Control, 4e. Waltham, MA: Butterworth‐Heinemann / Elsevier.

      10 MIL‐STD‐1629A (1980). Procedures for performing a failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis, Military standard. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense.

      11 Murray, S. (1989). Beauvais Cathedral: Architecture of Transcendence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

      12 NUREG‐0492 (1981). Fault tree handbook. Washington, DC: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.

      13 NUREG‐75/014 (1975). Reactor safety: an assessment of accident risk in U.S. commercial nuclear power plants. Technical report NUREG‐75/014. Washington, DC: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

      14 Vaughan, D. (1996). The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

      15 Zackmann, K. (2014). Risk in historical perspective: concepts, contexts, and conjunctions. In: Risk – A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Chapter 1 (ed. C. Klüppelberg, D. Straub, and I.M. Welpe), 3–35. Heidelberg: Springer‐Verlag.

      1 1 System aspects are discussed in Chapter 4.

      2.1 Introduction

      The words of risk analysis have been, and continue to be a problem. Many of you remember that when our Society for Risk Analysis was brand new, one of the first things it did was to establish a committee to define the word “risk.” This committee labored for 4 years and then gave up, saying in its final report, that maybe it's better not to define risk. Let each author define it in his own way, only please each should explain clearly what way that is (Kaplan 1997 , p. 407).

      This quotation neatly summarizes one of the problems with this discipline; there are no common definitions of many of the words that we are using. One reason may be that risk is a concept that many disciplines are concerned about, bringing different starting points, perspectives, and terminologies into the discussion. In addition, risk is a term that is commonly used in everyday language, often without a precise meaning attached to it. This chapter attempts to define the key concepts and words from the point of view of the main objectives of this book, which is risk assessment of technical and sociotechnical systems. This means that other users of risk analysis and risk assessment may choose other definitions, and we briefly mention some of these in this section. We have tried to develop a coherent and useful set of definitions that fits our purpose.

      A word of caution when reading about this topic is, therefore, to make sure that you understand what the authors mean, when they use words such as risk, hazard, and accident. Unfortunately, not all authors writing about risk have heeded the advice of Stan Kaplan, explaining clearly how they define the terms. The meaning may therefore be unclear and different from how we define the terms in this book.

      When discussing risk and other terms in this chapter, we sometimes use terms before they are properly defined. If this causes confusion or things are unclear, please be patient and read on and things will hopefully become more clear as you progress through the chapter.

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