•Comprehensively reviews human and organizational errors with a multi-level approach.•Quantifies risk impact of HOEs across fire events for probabilistic risk analysis.•Links key HOEs to enable risk ...modeling of fire events in high-rise buildings.•Offer insights for model developers through probabilistic risk analyses.•Provides theoretical insights for future research on HOE risk models.
For fire risk experts, the most parsimonious model is one that identifies errors due to human and organizational factors (HOFs) that can be changed through a series of interventions. This is a difficult task because of the dearth of studies to identify these types of events. However, it is possible to examine and identify human and organizational errors (HOEs) within fire risk situations. Many errors identified in fire risk environments are due to human factors that can be changed through employee training and development. In addition, many organizational factors, such as safety culture, can be changed over time through transformational interventions that shift existing mindsets. This paper presents a systematic review to identify errors due to human and organizational factors that apply to and potentially affect risk estimates in fire safety modelling of high-rise buildings. First, the paper describes the types of errors that occur in fire risk situations and then provides a review that categorizes and links human and organizational factors. The paper is both a qualitative and quantitative review, drawing on research from quantitative studies and case studies, including the Grenfell Fire. The review offers insights and recommendations to incorporate human and organizational risks into probabilistic risk analyses and suggests future directions for research.
Risk management represents a challenge for organizations, as it includes environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that can negatively impact organizations’ investments. This article shows a ...general approach for prioritizing organizational risks focused on sustainability, which is applied in a particular case. Based on the analysis of global reports such as the “Global Sustainable Development Report”, “Enterprise Risk Management-Integrating with Strategy and Performance”, and the “Global Risk Report”, five typologies of organizational risks with a focus on sustainability (geopolitical, economic, social, technological, and environmental) that support the concern for sustainability in organizations are characterized, taking into account viability and equitability. Additionally, some sub-risks are proposed for each characterized typology of risk. Subsequently, the application of paired surveys assigned to a group of experts formed by executives from the service sector, auditing and consulting firms, the oil and gas sector, the manufacturing sector, and the financial sector is carried out; the responses obtained are consolidated and used in this study as input for the application of DEMATEL and AHP methods to prioritize risks and sub-risks, respectively. The result obtained via the DEMATEL method is the following risk prioritization: (1) economic, (2) geopolitical, (3) social, (4) technological, and (5) environmental. Using the AHP method, the sustainability sub-risks with the highest level of prioritization for each typology of risk are (1) massive data fraud or theft incident (technological risk), (2) deficit in economic growth (economic risk), (3) water depletion (environmental risk), (4) lack of ethics in the conduct of business (geopolitical risk), and (5) chemical safety (social risk). The sensitivity analysis presents positive and negative values, indicating that the positive results do not generate substantial changes between the characterized sub-risks. On the other hand, the negative results indicate a notable decrease in the relative importance of the sub-risks. It is crucial to highlight that the observed variations remain within realistic limits and reflect the uncertainty inherent in decision-making in a dynamic environment.
Sustainable risk management is becoming widely accepted, making the incorporation of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues into strategic planning areas crucial to a responsible business ...philosophy. This article aims to rank organizational sub-risks with a focus on sustainability, offering a methodology based on the analytical network process (ANP) method to improve decision-making and reduce misrepresentation in qualitative evaluation criteria. An integrated approach is presented, starting with the characterization of five risk typologies based on global reports and then prioritizing risks and sub-risks using the ANP method. The sustainability sub-risks with the highest level of prioritization for each risk typology are (1) massive data fraud or theft incident (technological risk), (2) deficit in economic growth (economic risk), (3) water depletion (environmental risk), (4) lack of ethics in the conduct of business (geopolitical risk), and (5) chemical safety (social risk). Finally, a cosine similarity analysis is developed to compare the results obtained with the results of a risk prioritization performed with the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) method. The differences between the methods generate a similar risk prioritization; the high similarity indicates the consistency of the relationships and the prioritization of the criteria showing convergence. It is essential to mention that the results should be interpreted cautiously, considering the specific context in which this methodology is developed, and we recommend a periodic verification of risks and sub-risks.
Summary
While probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is an explicit methodology for complying with the performance requirements of the Building Code of Australia (BCA) or similar codes, it traditionally ...focuses only on technical risks of fire safety systems in a building. There are growing concerns that performance‐based fire engineering designs underestimate safety risk levels in high‐rise residential buildings. Existing fire risk models account for failures of technical systems but ignore human and organizational errors (HOEs) and the complex interactions among these variables. Probabilistic models in other applications, such as offshore platforms and nuclear plants, demonstrate the importance of HOE inclusion in risk models and the resulting impacts on overall risk. This paper proposes a comprehensive technical‐human‐organizational risk (T‐H‐O‐Risk) methodology to enhance the PRA approach by quantifying human and organizational risks in a probabilistic model using Bayesian Network (BN) analysis of HOEs and System Dynamics (SD) modelling for dynamic characterization of risk variations over time. While risk modelling itself is not novel, the current research develops unique and specific enhancements to existing risk approaches by integrating HOE risks with technical risks in a comprehensive dynamic and probabilistic model for high‐rise residential buildings. Three case studies are conducted to demonstrate the application of this comprehensive approach to the designs of various high‐rise residential buildings ranging from 18 to 24 storeys. Societal risks are represented in F‐N curves. Results show that in general, fire safety designs that do not consider HOEs underestimate overall risks generally by~20%—and can reach up to 42% in an extreme case. Furthermore, risks over time due to HOEs vary by as much as 30% over a 10‐year period. A sensitivity analysis indicates that deficient training, poor safety culture and ineffective emergency plans have significant impact on overall risk.
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Given that existing fire risk models often ignore human and organizational errors (HOEs) ultimately leading to underestimation of risks by as much as 80%, this study employs a ...technical-human-organizational risk (T-H-O-Risk) methodology to address knowledge gaps in current state-of-the-art probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) for high-rise residential buildings with the following goals: (1) Develop an improved PRA methodology to address concerns that deterministic, fire engineering approaches significantly underestimate safety levels that lead to inaccurate fire safety levels. (2) Enhance existing fire safety verification methods by incorporating probabilistic risk approach and HOEs for (i) a more inclusive view of risk, and (ii) to overcome the deterministic nature of current verification methods. (3) Perform comprehensive sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to address uncertainties in numerical estimates used in fault tree/event trees, Bayesian network and system dynamics and their propagation in a probabilistic model. (4) Quantification of human and organizational risks for high-rise residential buildings which contributes towards a policy agenda in the direction of a sustainable, risk-based regulatory regime. This research contributes to the development of the next-generation building codes and risk assessment methodologies.
The current paper presents an application of an alternative probabilistic risk assessment methodology that incorporates technical, human, and organizational risks (T-H-O-Risk) using Bayesian network ...(BN) and system dynamics (SD) modelling. Seven case studies demonstrate the application of this holistic approach to the designs of high-rise residential buildings. An incremental risk approach allows for quantification of the impact of human and organizational errors (HOEs) on different fire safety systems. The active systems considered are sprinklers, building occupant warning systems, smoke detectors, and smoke control systems. The paper presents detailed results from T-H-O-Risk modelling for HOEs and risk variations over time utilizing the SD modelling to compare risk acceptance in the seven case studies located in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, and UK. Results indicate that HOEs impact risks in active systems up to ~33%. Large variations are observed in the reliability of active systems due to HOEs over time. SD results indicate that a small behavioral change in ’risk perception’ of a building management team can lead to a very large risk to life variations over time through the self-reinforcing feedback loops. The quantification of difference in expected risk to life due to technical, human, and organizational risks for seven buildings for each of 16 trial designs is a novel aspect of this study. The research is an important contribution to the development of the next generation building codes and risk assessment methods.
Energy production has always been associated with a number of operational (technological) risks as well as risks resulting from external events. A large number of tools has emerged recently that ...utilize complex software solutions to minimize such risks, which shows in a significant reduction of failures at energy facilities in the past few years and a growth in the key performance indicators of energy busi- nesses. The most difficult ones to assess and prevent are organizational risks. The probability of such risks increases alongside the progress of structural transformations in the global energy sector. Such risks, despite their internal nature, are capable of triggering serious deformations within the governance system of an energy company and, given the specific features of the energy sector, lead to a sharp performance drop across the industry. The article presents a methodological framework for operational risk management in energy companies that is based upon the idea of identifying the priority results of companies’ performance. The proposed methodology is essentially about forming the risk space of an energy company and using it as a basis for quantitative assessment of the probability of risk events. This will in turn make it possible to identify critical organizational risks, assess anticipated damage and think of preventive management impact to offset the risk events.
Hazardous operational consequences of unethical behavior in high-risk projects can be traced back to inadequate relationships between businesses and the insurance industry. The communication of ...blame, as a consequence of major industrial accidents like the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, and the relevance of this communication of blame for subsequent insurance litigation, show that the awareness of the relationship between unethical behavior resulting in irresponsible procedural action and deficient loss-prevention practices is a significant component of risk consciousness. The awareness of ethical origins of project risks could alter the methods of design and monitoring of insurance contracts for risky technoorganizational ventures.
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