Quantifying And Controlling Catastrophic Risks

The perception, assessment and management of risk are increasingly important core principles for determining the development of both policy and strategic responses to civil and environmental catastrophes. Whereas these principles were once confined to some areas of activity i.e. financial and insurance, they are now widely used in civil and environmental engineering. Comprehensive and readable, Civil and Environmental Risk: Mitigation and Control, provides readers with the mathematical tools and quantitative methods for determining the probability of a catastrophic event and mitigating and controlling the aftermath. With this book engineers develop the required skills for accurately assessing risk and formulating appropriate response strategies. The two part treatment starts with a clear and rigorous exposition of the quantitative risk assessment process, followed by self-contained chapters concerning applications. One of the first books to address both natural and human generated disasters, topics include events such as pandemic diseases, climate changes, major hurricanes, super earthquakes, mega tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, industrial accidents and terrorist attacks. Case studies appear at the end of the book allowing engineers to see how these principles are applied to scenarios such as a super hurricane or mega tsunamis, a reactor core melt down in a nuclear plant, a terrorist attack on the national electric grid, and an abrupt climate change brought about by a change in the ocean currents in the North Atlantic. Written by the current Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, Environmental risk managers will find this reference a valuable and authoritative guide both in accurately calculating risk and its applications in their work. Key Features Mathematical tools for calculating and Controlling Catastrophic Risk Presents a systematic method for ranking the importance of societal threats Includes both Natural and Industrial Catastrophes Case studies cover such events as pandemic diseases, climate changes, major hurricanes, super earthquakes, mega tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, industrial accidents, and terrorist attacks.

PART 1? WHY RISK ASSESSMENT -- Chapter 1? Understanding Risk Assessement -- 1.1The Target Risks -- 1.2The Quantitative Definition of Risk -- 1.3The Meaning of Quantification -- 1.4Form of the Results of a Quantitative Risk Assessment -- 1.5References -- Chapter 2? Analytical Foundations of Quantitative Risk Assessment -- 2.1Quantitative Definition of Risk -- 2.2The Scenario Approach to Quantitative Risk Assessment -- 2.3Interpretation of Probability and Likelihood -- 2.4Quantification of the Scenarios -- 2.5Assembling the Results -- 2.6References -- Chapter 3? The Rational Management of Catastrophic Risks -- 3.1Benefits of Quantitative Risk Assessment -- 3.2The Role of the Case Studies -- 3.3Comparing Quantitative Risks Using the Case Studies -- 3.4Observations from the Case Studies -- 3.5Insights from Comparing Results -- 3.6Where Do We Go from Here? -- References -- PART 2? Risk Assessment Case Studies -- Chapter 3? Risk of a Catastrophic Hurricane in -- 3.1Summary of the Risk Assess ...

Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World collects the papers presented at the 28th European Safety and Reliability Conference, ESREL 2018 in Trondheim, Norway, June 17-21, 2018. The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk management Safety and Reliability – Safe Societies in a Changing World will be invaluable to academics and professionals working in a wide range of industrial and governmental sectors: offshore oil and gas, nuclear engineering, aeronautics and aerospace, marine transport and engineering, railways, road transport, automotive engineering, civil engineering, critical infrastructures, electrical and electronic engineering, energy production and distribution, environmental engineering, information technology and telecommunications, insurance and finance, manufacturing, marine transport, mechanical engineering, security and protection, and policy making.

From the acclaimed author of The Pencil and To Engineer Is Human, The Essential Engineer is an eye-opening exploration of the ways in which science and engineering must work together to address our world’s most pressing issues, from dealing with climate change and the prevention of natural disasters to the development of efficient automobiles and the search for renewable energy sources. While the scientist may identify problems, it falls to the engineer to solve them. It is the inherent practicality of engineering, which takes into account structural, economic, environmental, and other factors that science often does not consider, that makes engineering vital to answering our most urgent concerns. Henry Petroski takes us inside the research, development, and debates surrounding the most critical challenges of our time, exploring the feasibility of biofuels, the progress of battery-operated cars, and the question of nuclear power. He gives us an in-depth investigation of the various options for renewable energy—among them solar, wind, tidal, and ethanol—explaining the benefits and risks of each. Will windmills soon populate our landscape the way they did in previous centuries? Will synthetic trees, said to be more efficient at absorbing harmful carbon dioxide than real trees, soon dot our prairies? Will we construct a “sunshade” in outer space to protect ourselves from dangerous rays? In many cases, the technology already exists. What’s needed is not so much invention as engineering. Just as the great achievements of centuries past—the steamship, the airplane, the moon landing—once seemed beyond reach, the solutions to the twenty-first century’s problems await only a similar coordination of science and engineering. Eloquently reasoned and written, The Essential Engineer identifies and illuminates these problems—and, above all, sets out a course for putting ideas into action.

Introduces risk assessment with key theories, proven methods, and state-of-the-art applications Risk Assessment: Theory, Methods, and Applications remains one of the few textbooks to address current risk analysis and risk assessment with an emphasis on the possibility of sudden, major accidents across various areas of practice—from machinery and manufacturing processes to nuclear power plants and transportation systems. Updated to align with ISO 31000 and other amended standards, this all-new 2nd Edition discusses the main ideas and techniques for assessing risk today. The book begins with an introduction of risk analysis, assessment, and management, and includes a new section on the history of risk analysis. It covers hazards and threats, how to measure and evaluate risk, and risk management. It also adds new sections on risk governance and risk-informed decision making; combining accident theories and criteria for evaluating data sources; and subjective probabilities. The risk assessment process is covered, as are how to establish context; planning and preparing; and identification, analysis, and evaluation of risk. Risk Assessment also offers new coverage of safe job analysis and semi-quantitative methods, and it discusses barrier management and HRA methods for offshore application. Finally, it looks at dynamic risk analysis, security and life-cycle use of risk. Serves as a practical and modern guide to the current applications of risk analysis and assessment, supports key standards, and supplements legislation related to risk analysis Updated and revised to align with ISO 31000 Risk Management and other new standards and includes new chapters on security, dynamic risk analysis, as well as life-cycle use of risk analysis Provides in-depth coverage on hazard identification, methodologically outlining the steps for use of checklists, conducting preliminary hazard analysis, and job safety analysis Presents new coverage on the history of risk analysis, criteria for evaluating data sources, risk-informed decision making, subjective probabilities, semi-quantitative methods, and barrier management Contains more applications and examples, new and revised problems throughout, and detailed appendices that outline key terms and acronyms Supplemented with a book companion website containing Solutions to problems, presentation material and an Instructor Manual Risk Assessment: Theory, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition is ideal for courses on risk analysis/risk assessment and systems engineering at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It is also an excellent reference and resource for engineers, researchers, consultants, and practitioners who carry out risk assessment techniques in their everyday work.

How knowing the extreme risks of climate change can help us prepare for an uncertain future If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future—why not our planet? In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater. A rogue nation might shoot particles into the Earth's atmosphere, geoengineering cooler temperatures. Zeroing in on the unknown extreme risks that may yet dwarf all else, the authors look at how economic forces that make sensible climate policies difficult to enact, make radical would-be fixes like geoengineering all the more probable. What we know about climate change is alarming enough. What we don't know about the extreme risks could be far more dangerous. Wagner and Weitzman help readers understand that we need to think about climate change in the same way that we think about insurance—as a risk management problem, only here on a global scale. With a new preface addressing recent developments Wagner and Weitzman demonstrate that climate change can and should be dealt with—and what could happen if we don't do so—tackling the defining environmental and public policy issue of our time.

Approaches to Enterprise Risk Management is a multi-author book written by leading experts in the field of risk management including Aswath Damodoran, John C. Groth and David Shimko. It is a valuable tool that enables you to assess the potential business threats, both from within your organization and from external sources. It comprises over 25 chapters covering the range of risks your organization might face including financial, strategic, operational risks. It offers you over 20 practical step-by-step guides on the required steps to cope with any detrimental event that could impact on your company's financial health. There are also a range of checklists including Balancing Hedging Objectives with Accounting Rules (FAS 133) , Creating a Risk Register, What Is Forensic Auditing? And Managing and Auditing the Risk of Business Interruption, Captive Insurance Companies: How to Reduce Your Costs, Hedging Credit Risk-Case Studies and Strategies.

Since the dawn of the Atomic Age, nuclear experts have labored to imagine the unimaginable and prevent it. They confronted a deceptively simple question: When is a reactor “safe enough” to adequately protect the public from catastrophe? Some experts sought a deceptively simple answer: an estimate that the odds of a major accident were, literally, a million to one. Far from simple, this search to quantify accident risk proved to be a tremendously complex and controversial endeavor, one that altered the very notion of safety in nuclear power and beyond. Safe Enough? is the first history to trace these contentious efforts, following the Atomic Energy Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as their experts experimented with tools to quantify accident risk for use in regulation and to persuade the public of nuclear power’s safety. The intense conflict over the value of risk assessment offers a window on the history of the nuclear safety debate and the beliefs of its advocates and opponents. Across seven decades and the accidents at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the quantification of risk has transformed both society’s understanding of the hazards posed by complex technologies and what it takes to make them safe enough.