(40w) Risk Assessment: How to Avoid Slipping, Tripping, and Falling over the Numbers.

Translating the numbers of how often and how big incidents occur, to what can be done and ensuring something is done.

It is difficult to accurately predict when numbers were first used by homo sapiens, but the first record of written numbers was the Mesopotamian base 60 system c. 3400 BC. The first numbers were never written down – they were used when people spoke to tell a story. The power of using numbers to tell a story is evident throughout the evolution of humanity, and today we thrive in a data-centric world where the lifeblood of so many organizations are their numbers. But how do we ensure the numbers we share in technical reporting tell a productive and valuable story?

It is widely accepted that the birth of a full facility risk assessment was through the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1975. For the next 40+ years high hazard industries, such as petroleum, have developed such studies to improve our understanding of overall risk to allow inherent risk management.

This paper discusses how the requirement for, and application of risk based studies such as: Quantified Risk Assessments (QRAs) and Facility Siting Studies (FSS), has become ambiguous over those 40+ years, and the story they tell may not be as intriguing or useful as it once was. From leak frequency analysis to consequence modelling, to risk integration, numbers are paramount at every milestone of these complex safety studies, but how easy is it to become lost within these numbers, and miscommunicated to those who it effects the most?

Taking the numbers of how often and how big, a story can be told not just to meet corporate standards or local regulations, but to ensure our workers and the public are safe, as we face the greatest challenge of our time, to bring our world the energy it needs in the most responsible way ever imagined.