Insurance risk evaluations

A common risk evaluation and presentation method is simply to multiply the frequency of each event by consequence of each event and then sum these products for all situations considered in the analysis. In insurance terms, this is the expected loss per year. The results of an uncertainty analysis, if performed, can be presented as a range defined by upper and lower confidence bounds that contain the best estimates. If the total risk represented by the best estimate or by the range estimate is... 

But at the same time the regulation drafters are faced with the still more difficult job of doing a risk evaluation. That is, they must recommend public policy decisions as to the acceptable levels of risks for a variety of hazardous waste activities, e.g., acceptable minimums for the efficiency of destruction of hazardous wastes by incineration. In principle, this process may be not unlike the decisions made by a banker about a potential loan, or an insurance underwriter in setting the rate for an insurance policy a risk assessment is made, and an appropriate safety margin is factored into the interest rate or the policy premium to arrive at an acceptable level of risk for the individual case (but based on experience and projections for a large number of cases). 

The reverse would be that insurance and other financial institutions would require demonstration of higher safety performance as a prerequisite for financing or underwriting risks. For example, in order to operate, nuclear power plants in the United States must demonstrate sufficient financial assurance to satisfy liability claims of members of the public for personal injury and property damage in the event of a catastrophic nuclear accident. Such insurance is available through the American Nuclear Insurers, which evaluates plant performance against objectives, criteria, and guidelines developed in conjunction with the U.S. NRC and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. A plant must receive a favorable report from this review before it can be insured. 

Behavior-based safety places responsibilities on workers for which they may not be qualified. Although worker involvement is important, it has limitations and is not a substitute for technically competent health and safety experts reviewing both existing and future operations to insure that hazards are identified and controlled. Few workers have been trained in hazard identification, risk evaluation or methods of control (hierarchy) [p. 17]. 

AH insurance companies provide property risk engineers or inspectors to evaluate their insured risks for high value properties or operations. So in reality, a basic standard level of protection is probably maintained in the... 

The use of computer modeling for rapidly and easily estimating the effects from explosions, fires, and gas releases is almost commonplace in risk evaluations for the hydrocarbon industry. Specialized risk consultants and even insurance risk offices can now offer a variety of software products or services to conduct mathematical consequence modehng of most hydrocarbon adverse events. Even major petroleum companies have bought... 

The CIRC is an institution directly under the State Council. It is responsible for formulating and enforcing insurance-related laws and regulations overseeing insurance business operations protecting the interests of policy holders setting up a risk evaluation and advance warning system to minimize insurance risk. 

Floating vessels for offshore operations offer reduced installation costs but also present additional vulnerability factors. All floating structures must ensure buoyancy integrity is maintained otherwise the vessel may sink with catastrophic results. Similarly propulsion are provided at some installations to provided position stability. All major vessels are required by insurance requirements and most marine regulations to maintain buoyancy systems and loss of position stability will impact ongoing operations. Both of these systems can therefore be considered critical support systems and must be evaluated for risk and loss control measures either thorough duplication and protection measures or a combination of both. 

A summary of evaluating hazardous materials can be found in the book Guidelines for Chemical Reactivity Evaluation and Application to Process Design (CCPS, 1995c) and Essential Practices for Managing Chemical Reactivity flaz-ards (CCPS, 2003d). For additional information, refer to IRInformation IM.1.8.0, Hazardous Materials Evaluation (Industrial Risk Insurers, 1998). 

Depending on the needs of the individual pharmacy, several different types of insurance policies may be required to provide adequate risk protection for the business. The geographic location, type of practice, and services offered will influence the types of insurance needed. The risk management process is a continuous process, and periodic evaluations are necessary to address new or emerging risk threats to the pharmacy. Emerging threats discussed later in this chapter exemplify how recent changes in health care practices (privacy issues) and technology create new and different risk threats to the pharmacy. 

Recommendations that are strictly for the protection of the fixed property and business interruption can be easily evaluated against the potential economic loss that will be suffered. Since it is already assumed that the probability of the risk is high, since a recommendation has been made, it is simply a matter to determine if the cost to implement the recommendation would exceed the cost to rebuild and economic loss of sales. This value may be further reduced if insurance coverages would alleviate some of the burden of the projected loss. If the cost to implement the recommendation approaches the rebuild and business interruption loss, it not justified and therefore impractical. 

Notify insurance representative or risk manager. You may need an on-site evaluation before taking action. 

The Project Manager is responsible for the implementation of the Process Safety Management (PSM) and Risk Management Programs (RMP) and must appoint a qualified hazard study leader to conduct hazards evaluations and insure that the results are incorporated into the Process Hazards Analysis and Review. 

Physicochemical testing is performed to characterize the physical and chemical properties of a plastic to insure that the composition of the synthetic medium will not compromise the quality of the drug being stored within it. To perform these tests, samples of plastic identical to the material being used in the primary package are subjected to an extraction procedure—to dissolve in an extraction solution leachable compounds that are at risk of entering the pharmaceutical preparation. This extraction solution is then subjected to analysis to evaluate the identity and quantity of leachants. For most plastics, the appropriate extraction medium is purified water, but elastomeric closures for use with injections should include extraction with three different extraction... 

The most serious danger that a pipeline faces is a rupture caused by uninformed digging. More pipelines mean more accidents. The tendency for C02 to remain at ground level or move into low areas creates novel safety risks that need to be evaluated for each C02 transport system at each site. Ultimately, insurance and liability issues may prove to be a constraint on C02 transport. 

Estimation of Risk. The estimation of risk contains uncertainties, based on the lack of specific data (such as exposure information) and/or the lack of understanding of the mechanism of toxic action of a compound. Between the extremes of acturial risk, which is based on enough information that "time has removed the uncertainty," such as the probability of death as cited in an insurance table, and theoretical risk, which is based on probabilistic calculations of events which have never actually occurred (e.g., nuclear "winter" (7)) lies a wide continuum into which most estimates of human health effects fall. In real-life situations, many assumptions are made in evaluating risk in order to make a conclusion, and these assumptions lead to uncertainties in the final result. These uncertainties should be understood as limitations to the best guess science can presently make. Although one response to this uncertainty, in the face of an outcome as fearsome as cancer, is to deny that there is a lack of certainty, the more reasonable response is to try to estimate the uncertainty, making it clear that any estimate is bracketed by these possible errors. 

The opportunity cost of capital for pharmaceutical R D is higher than the interest rate on safe investments, such as insured bank deposits or government bonds, but just how high the cost of capital for pharmaceutical R D projects is depends on how investors evaluate the risks of these investments, (See appendix C for a detailed discussion of the cost of capital.) The risk and, therefore, the cost of capital varies across different projects and even within the same R D project at different stages of development. The cost of capital for any investment also varies from year to year with underlying changes in the risk-free rate of interest (e.g., on bank deposits). Thus, the full cost of R D varies widely over time and across projects. 

The message to be used in the hazard label should therefore be very care-fiilly evaluated and tested prior to inclusion to insure the ability of the message to communicate risk accurately. 

The comparative evaluation or balancing of risks and benefits of pharmaceutical products is inevitable, although there are no standard, widely accepted definitions used in medicine. Definitions and terms depend on the context in which they are used, or on the user. Patients, physicians, formularies, pharmaceutical companies, ethics committees, regulatory authorities, and other public health bodies, insurers, consumer groups, and others may have very different perspectives, e.g. the perspective of regulators and companies usually in-... 

An investor acquiring a pool of mortgt es from a lender measures the amount of associated prepayment risk by using a financial model to project the level of expected future payments. Although it is impossible to evaluate with any accuracy the prepayment potential of an individual mortgage, such analysis is reasonable for a large pool of loans. This is similar to what actuaries do when they assess the future liability of an insurer that has written personal pension contracts. The level of prepayment risk for a pool of loans is lower than that for an individual mortgt e. 

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