ALARP point

For risks falling below the line, efforts might be made to further reduce the risks so that they are as low as reasonably practical (ALARP). In other words, activities with risks in the ALARP region are candidates for further risk reduction to the extent such risk reduction can be justified by the additional resources required to achieve it. Figure 4.1 implies that for Higher risk activities in the ALARP region (those closer to the intolerable level), it may be appropriate to expend, proportionately, more resources for risk reduction than for those with lower risks. At some point, the risks become... 

Note that there is no real concept of temporary ALARP , one cannot accept a non-ALARP solution whilst a permanent ALARP alternative is sought. A particular control may offer a temporary fix but the resulting risk is either acceptable or not at a given point in time. 

At this point it is worth mentioning how the ALARP approach to risk acceptability changes markedly when it comes to medical devices. For example. International Standard ISO 14971 [10] affords manufacturers the ability to justify risks on an ALARP basis. The European Commission Medical Device Directive (MDD) [11] cites ISO 14971 as a Harmonised Standard however the directive contains a number of Essential Requirements on risk acceptability which appear to conflict with ISO 14971. 

RAM techniques possess many similarities to those that are used for safety. However, the key difference between RAM and safety analyses is that it is possible to talk about optimum reliability, i.e., the point at which a dollar spent on improving reliability leads to less than a cost-averaged dollar in benefits, as illustrated in Figure 16.1. With safety, however, there is no real optimum value all incidents are unacceptable. As explained with the discussion to do with ALARP, no company or government agency is going to commit to an acceptable level in the number of deaths or serious injuries. And nor should they. 

Definition of hazard, risk discussions on likelihood, consequence risk — register, matrix, ranking. Consequence ranking, preliminary hazard analysis tolerance point—ALARP refreshing on mathematics, fault tolerance, plant ageing, and basic functional safety fail safe operations in plants. 

ALARP concept basically comes from the British health and safety system (Act 1974)- It is not in true sense a quantitative method, although cost—benefit analysis is often used to get ALARP. It is a challenging subjective method, as it requires duty holders and others to exercise their judgment very carefully. In risk analysis, three factors play important role, viz. trouble, time, and cost. The breakeven point in... 

As seen from Fig. 1/4.3-2, at any point duty-holders need to balance between sacrifices like trouble, time, and cost with additional risk reduction. Duty-holders need to first identify risks to be avoided, then find the cost, effort, and time to be sacrificed and compare with risk reduction involved. Such judgments are done on the basis of nature of hazard, risk involvement, safety measure, and implementation of safety measures. Therefore, it needs significant analysis to determine how to get into the ALARP range, since values are the main prime mover for this principle. 

Despite the widely published figures for Maximum Tolerable Risk (e.g.. Table 2.2), the UK HSE sometimes press for a Maximum Tolerable Risk to be targeted at a lower level nearer to the Broadly Acceptable level (e.g., an order of magnitude). This, however, is a controversial area. In the authors opinion, whatever may the starting point be, the ALARP calculation will, in any case, cause the risk to be reduced to an appropriate level. 

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