Analysing and Assessing Risk

A health risk assessment (HRA) must also be prepared but has less impact on operational risk and safety. Figure 6-1 is a diagram showing how these analyses and assessments interact. 

The enterprise assesses conflicts among requirements and constraints identified during requirements analysis to identify alternative functional and performance requirements, where necessary. Requirements trade-off analyses and assessments are performed to identify the recommended set of requirements and constraints in terms of risk, cost, schedule, and performance impacts. 

When risks have been analysed and assessed, decisions can be made about workplace precautions. 

Making an information system secure is a very hard work since 2006, more than 7000 vulnerabilities have been published every year. In front of such a danger, evaluating information system security appears to be necessary in order to analyse and prevent risks. Our approach focuses on this issue and aims at producing quantitative security measures to assess the level of risk faced by an operational system considering an evolving environment. To this purpose, we first identily environmental factors that have an influence on the system vulnerability exploitation process 1) the vulnerability life cycle events 2) the attacker population behaviour 3) the system administrator s behaviour. We study the evolution of these factors and model them and their interactions with the system, to evaluate their consequences on the system security. 

The detection and analysis, including quantification, of cyanobacterial toxins are essential for monitoring their occurrence in natural and controlled waters used for agricultural purposes, potable supplies, recreation and aquaculture. Risk assessment of the cyanobacterial toxins for the protection of human and animal health, and fundamental research, are also dependent on efficient methods of detection and analysis. In this article we discuss the methods developed and used to detect and analyse cyanobacterial toxins in bloom and scum material, water and animal/clinical specimens, and the progress being made in the risk assessment of the toxins. 

Interpreting PSA as any risk assessment using accident probabilities and consequences, government and industry have prepared many examples. These are discussed as Public Risk, Specialized Analyses, and Performance Improvement. 

In the final phase of risk analysis—risk characterization—one integrates outputs of effects and exposure assessments. Risk is expressed in qualitative or quantitative estimates by comparison with reference values (e.g., hazard quotient). The severity of potential or actual damage should be characterized with the degree of uncertainty of risk estimates. Assumptions, data uncertainties and limitations of analyses are to be described clearly and reflected in the conclusions. The final product is a report that communicates to the affected and interested parties the analysis findings (Byrd and Cothern, 2000). 

Quantitative risk assessment (QRA) The systematic development of numerical estimates of the expected frequency and consequence of potential accidents associated with a facility or an operation. Using consequence and probability analyses and other factors such as population density and expected weather conditions, QRA estimates the fatality rate for a given set of events. 

The liquid and solid effluents are well characterized. As the ACW I Committee noted in its original and supplemental reports, the gaseous process emissions will have to be characterized for health risk assessments and environmental risk assessments required by EPA guidelines (NRC, 1999, 2000a). These results, along with the results of analyses of metals emissions (including chromium VI), can be used to assess the environmental impact of a facility through accepted risk-assessment methods (EPA, 1998). 

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