Keynote 2 – On the Management of Risks and Life Safety

Abstract:

Over the last decade management of risks has gained significant interest on the global agenda. It is increasingly being realized by decision makers at local and global scale that the management of shared societal resources necessitates a more systematic and joint approach – and that sustainable societal developments depends on our success in achieving this.

Risk management, or risk informed decision making, has been a research area under development in many different industries over the last 30-40 years. Substantial progress has been achieved and in industries such as aeronautics and aviation, offshore oil and gas exploration and production, nuclear energy production, chemical production, etc., risk management has become part of the daily practice. However, despite of these developments there are substantial challenges which must be overcome before risk informed decision making can play its role to the fullest.

The present lecture presents risk management or risk informed decision making from the perspective of an engineer. Starting point is taken in basic considerations on uncertainty and probability and the challenge of decision making subject to uncertainty. With this setting an overview is provided on how successful the global society is in managing its resources and risks and based on this overview a categorization of different types of risks is proposed. Following this, a framework for risk assessment of systems is proposed and a few examples on its application in engineering are provided.

Finally, the important issue of life safety management is addressed and the Life Quality Index is introduced as a means for supporting decisions on affordable societal investments into life safety improvements.

Teaching goals:

• After attending the seminar delegates should be able to:
• · Understand the value of risk assessment and hopefully also be able to see possible solutions to the complex global problems societies are facing today.
• · get new insight to the tools of risk assessment
• · Learning from other professions and their use of risk management, the hospital pharmacist will be able to expand their use of solutions developed for risk assessment in other areas.
• · no longer panic in the future when decisions have to be taken before all parameters influencing the decision are known and evaluated in details
• · the lecture will explain the value of global risk management and how it has developed over the last 3-4 decades.
• · it will give an insight to how decision makers manage to share social resources leading to the development of sustainable systems within the society and the international collaboration.
• · examples based on an engineering background will be used to exemplify the value of risk assessment in complex decision making.