Risk decision making

For all risk measures it is possible to estimate the risk level of the current process as well as the risk levels from incorporation of various risk reduction alternatives. Management can then use this information as an important input in the final risk decision-making process. 

G. L. Elamm and R. G. Schwartz, Issues and Strategies in Risk Decision Making, International Process Safety Management Conference and Workshop, September 22-24, 1993, San Francisco, CA, 351-371, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, New York, NY, 1993. 

Starr, C., 1971, Benefit-Cost Studies in Sociotechnical Systems, in Perspectives on Benefit-Risk Decision Making, National Academy of Engineering p 17. 

In using any risk measure, it should be remembered that risk measures, at best, are only estimates of possible event frequency and consequences All risk measurements have uncertainties. In some situations, the uncertainties can be highly significant. The fact that risk measurement is imprecise should be a consideration in any risk-based decision-making process. Chapter 5 of Reference 4 provides further discussion of uncertainty in risk decision making. 

Figure 1 Hierarchy of hazard ranking tools in risk decision making. (Reproduced from Pittinger et al. (2003) Risk Analysis 23 529-535, with permission from Blackwell Publishing.)...

Managing risks, and deciding on the appropriate causal model, is an essential component of both public and private risk decision-making. It follows that current cancer risk assessments must reflect the state-of-science and rely as little as possible on conjecture. Specifically, the U.S. Enviromnental Protection Agency (EPA) (EPA 2005) adds that ... 

Proper communication features multiple aetors. The U.S. National Research Council report (Stern and Fineberg 1996) is an important milestone in the reeog-nition of the need for risk decision making as an inclusive multi-actor process. It also was a germinal precursor to the idea of risk governance with its emphasis on... 

Pidgeon, N.F., Poortinga, W., Rowe, G., Jones T.-H., Walls, J. and O Riordan, T. (2005) Using surveys in public participation processes for risk decision making The case of the 2003 British CM Nation public debate . Risk Analysis, 25 (2) ... 

The concept of ALARP helps with respect to the economic considerations necessary in risk decision making. A good and easily understood definition of ALARP may be found in the draft of MIL-STD-882E, the Department of Defense Standard Practice for System Safety ... 

It would be highly unusual for a text or standard on system safety not to include risk assessment matrices and provide examples. Tliere are many, many variations of matrices and the definitions of the terms used in them vary greatly. The matrix used should be the one to which management and users in an organization decide is best for them. It is strongly recommended that a suitable matrix be chosen because of its value in risk decision making. 

While the complexity of this collective body of observation and experience may improve the quality of risk decision making, the sheer volume of information creates difficult rhetorical problems when individuals must determine a course of action. If individuals attempt to document events from too many incommensurate viewpoints, they can easily become overwhelmed and overcautious in the face of risk. Individuals who limit their documentation to a single viewpoint may face less anxiety, but they will not have sufficient resources to operate in conditions of profound uncertainty. Complexity can provide decision makers with the fullest account of hazardous environments. But decision makers must have the tools to sort through complexity to isolate and weigh how each individual factor contributes to risk. 

Scientists themselves frequently deploy more than one type of warrant as a guide to risk decision making. Despite its apparent distance from material experience in local sites, scientific knowledge makes sense only if scientists construct physically probable objects that conform to actual conditions underground. If representations fail to meet these expectations, both mathematical calculations and verbal conclusions must be adjusted to conform to the material possibilities of density, specific gravity, and the like. 

It is not possible within the framework of this analysis to determine which features of the representation are self-conscious and which reflect deeper patterns of thought and habitual action (Cf. McNeill and Duncan, 2000). These representations do not reveal Libby s thoughts at the moment of risk decision making. They are not demonstrations in the conventional sense, though they demonstrate what an experienced miner s representation might look like. These gestures demonstrate how an experienced miner can assume alternative viewpoints strategically to help her think about her work. 

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