Week 6 - Lecture 10 - Risk management: Analysis & Evaluation

Question 1

Safety-I

Answer 1

Classical safety science is not interested is the state of normalcy; it only focusses on when something goes wrong and tries to reduce the likelihood that something goes wrong.

Question 2

Safety-II

Answer 2

Rather than only focusing on what goes wrong, you focus on what goes right. Human ingenuity is given more focus.

Question 3

Risk management works incredibly well in certain contexts, why?

Answer 3

1. Data;
2. Limited complexity;
3. Ability to simulate.

Question 4

Criticism on risk management

Answer 4

1. Not all risks can be known in advance;
2. Cannot be quantified;
3. No adequate protection.

Question 5

Precautionary principle

Answer 5

If you want to change something from the status quo, you need to prove that it does not do any damage in advance (burden of proof)

Question 6

Redundance

Answer 6

Backup systems in place when a key system is knocked out. It is very expensive, but it increases resilience immensely.

Question 7

Resilience

Answer 7

Thinking about plan B and limiting the amount of time you need to overcome a crisis.

Question 8

Tragic governance

Answer 8

Rather than taking responsibility for something despite having tried their best to overcome it, they should accept the fact that random stuff still happens.

Question 9

The regulatory paradox

Answer 9

1. Incidents are rare and do not display regular patterns;
2. The safer something is, the less there will be to measure;
3. If something never happens or happens rarely, it is impossible to know how well interventions work;
4. Since interventions are costly, scarse resources may be redistributed elsewhere.

Question 10

Proving causality is super difficult, why?

Answer 10

Your barriers can’t be proven effective if nothing challenges your measures.