(55bs) Making Sense of Risk Results

Risk based studies are very useful, but at the same time, the results are extremely complicated. While we have a basic set of results that can be used to illustrate the risks to people, these are relatively simple for risk practitioners and sometimes too complicated for site managers.

FN curves show the risk to all people from all sources, and individual risk contours illustrate the risk from all scenarios to people across specific locations, but how do we translate these results into actions. Generally, the action is to relocate people to lower risk areas, or upgrade buildings to mitigate the impacts identified. However, this is not always feasible. What if the site footprint is limited; there are public receptors who cannot be relocated; or building upgrades are cost-prohibitive or infeasible?

We must better quantify and evaluate the sources of risk rather than focusing on mitigating the impacts from the events. We need to evaluate the type of risks, the potential initiating events, and then we can assess the potential methods to effectively mitigate the risks. Existing risk result presentations are often very poor at illustrating the sources of risk. To effectively identify the sources of risk requires that we carefully dissect the risk results, while maintaining their validity and intent.

This paper will focus on how we find these risk drivers and make enough sense of them to create actionable recommendations that protect people.