Natural disasters are still quite frequent throughout Europe but rare at a given site. As a result, the stakeholders responsible for mitigating natural hazard risk often have false perceptions about ...the risks, which tend to slow the development of management plans and owner actions to increase natural hazard resilience. To address this issue, this paper introduces a model for communication and management support of natural hazards risk to stakeholders, who are often non-experts in the field. The model incorporates a seven-grade scale consistent with European labelling of product energy consumption. However, the proposed implementation also includes a systematic distinction between long-term and short-term risk tolerance, enabling the introduction of a time-dependent grade reduction in cases where the estimated risk is intolerable in the long term. This approach helps improve stakeholders' perception of natural hazards risk while incentivising actions that help reduce that risk. The gradual reduction of grades over time enables systematically introducing increasingly detrimental actions if the risk is long-term intolerable, thus strengthening the risk management process.
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•A model for communication and management support of natural hazards is introduced.•A systematic distinction is made between long-term and short-term risk tolerance.•A seven-grade scale consistent with European product labelling is integrated.•A gradual time-dependent grade reduction is introduced.•Increasingly severe actions can be introduced if the risk is long-term intolerable.
Self‐driving vehicles (SDVs) promise to considerably reduce traffic crashes. One pressing concern facing the public, automakers, and governments is “How safe is safe enough for SDVs?” To answer this ...question, a new expressed‐preference approach was proposed for the first time to determine the socially acceptable risk of SDVs. In our between‐subject survey (N = 499), we determined the respondents’ risk‐acceptance rate of scenarios with varying traffic‐risk frequencies to examine the logarithmic relationships between the traffic‐risk frequency and risk‐acceptance rate. Logarithmic regression models of SDVs were compared to those of human‐driven vehicles (HDVs); the results showed that SDVs were required to be safer than HDVs. Given the same traffic‐risk‐acceptance rates for SDVs and HDVs, their associated acceptable risk frequencies of SDVs and HDVs were predicted and compared. Two risk‐acceptance criteria emerged: the tolerable risk criterion, which indicates that SDVs should be four to five times as safe as HDVs, and the broadly acceptable risk criterion, which suggests that half of the respondents hoped that the traffic risk of SDVs would be two orders of magnitude lower than the current estimated traffic risk. The approach and these results could provide insights for government regulatory authorities for establishing clear safety requirements for SDVs.
Safety is paramount in rail transportation. The International Safety Standard IEC 61508, issued by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2000, describes the modern concept of safety ...and the specifications for safety evaluation in a systematic manner. On this basis, the EN 50129 railway transportation safety standard and safety integrity level(SIL) are established. Through the above analysis, the relationship between safety-related system reliability, acceptable risk, and safety index is summarized. It is clear that the safety index is based on acceptable risks. Nonetheless, as the economy and society advance, the safety index mandated by the SIL falls behind. Consequently, the principles and methodologies for calculating the safety index are presented. The paper proposes a reference for the Chinese railway safety index based on actual data from the Chinese railways over the past few years.
Substantial progress has been made in characterising the risk associated with exposure to allergens in food. However, absence of agreement on what risk is tolerable has made it difficult to set ...quantitative limits to manage that risk and protect allergic consumers effectively. This paper reviews scientific progress in the area and the diverse status of allergen management approaches and lack of common standards across different jurisdictions, including within the EU. This lack of regulation largely explains why allergic consumers find Precautionary Allergen Labelling confusing and cannot rely on it. We reviewed approaches to setting quantitative limits for a broad range of food safety hazards to identify the reasoning leading to their adoption. This revealed a diversity of approaches from pragmatic to risk-based, but we could not find clear evidence of the process leading to the decision on risk acceptability. We propose a framework built around the criteria suggested by Murphy and Gardoni (2008) for approaches to defining tolerable risks. Applying these criteria to food allergy, we concluded that sufficient knowledge exists to implement the framework, including sufficient expertise across the whole range of stakeholders to allow opinions to be heard and respected, and a consensus to be achieved.
•Quantitative limits for unintended allergen presence have in general not been defined across and within jurisdictions.•Inability to define what risk is tolerable is a major obstacle to defining those limits.•Diverse approaches (pragmatic to risk-based) have been adopted to define quantitative limits for other food safety hazards.•How tolerability decisions were reached in the case of those hazards is unclear.•We propose a framework for transparent decisions on risk tolerability, founded on full participation of stakeholders.
Highlights • A review of the banned antibiotic chloramphenicol (CAP) in food is presented. • CAP's occurrence, sources, natural background, and risks are discussed. • Shortcomings of the toxicology ...of low-level exposures are reviewed. • A Threshold of Toxicological Concern (TTC) for CAP is proposed. • CAP's TTC is molecularly framed within its natural presence in foods.
The performance of cervical cancer screening will decline as a function of lower disease prevalence—a consequence of successful human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination. Replacement of cytology with ...molecular HPV testing as the primary screening test and adoption of risk‐based screening, with less intense screening of vaccinated individuals and initiated at older ages is expected to improve efficiency. However, policy officials may decide to further reduce or eliminate screening as the ratio of benefits to harms continues to decline. To evaluate the level of risk currently tolerated for different cancers in the United States (ie, for which clinical guidelines do not recommend secondary prevention though effective screening methods exist), we used US cancer registry data to compare incidence (2008‐2012) and survival (1988‐2011) associated with different cancers for which organized screening is recommended and not recommended. The most common cancer at ages 70 to 74 years (ie, age group with highest cancer incidence and reasonable life expectancy to consider screening in the US) satisfying Wilson and Jungner's classic screening criteria was vulvar cancer (incidence = 9/100 000 females). In comparison, the incidence of cervical cancer among females 65 years of age (the upper recommended age limit for screening) was 13 cases per 100 000 females (low as a reflection of effective screening), whereas 10‐year survival was 66% (similar to vulvar cancer at 67%). Our approach of defining tolerable risk in cancer screening could help guide future decisions to modify cervical screening programs.
Choosing secure water resource management plans inevitably requires trade‐offs between risks (for a variety of stakeholders), costs, and other impacts. We have previously argued that water resources ...planning should focus upon metrics of risk of water restrictions, accompanied by extensive simulation and scenario‐based exploration of uncertainty. However, the results of optimization subject to risk constraints can be sensitive to the specification of tolerable risk, which may not be precisely or consistently defined by different stakeholders. In this paper, we recast the water resources planning problem as a multiobjective optimization problem to identify least cost schemes that satisfy a set of criteria for tolerable risk, where tolerable risk is defined in terms of the frequency of water use restrictions of different levels of severity. Our proposed method links a very large ensemble of climate model projections to a water resource system model and a multiobjective optimization algorithm to identify a Pareto optimal set of water resource management plans across a 25 years planning period. In a case study application to the London water supply system, we identify water resources management plans that, for a given financial cost, maximize performance with respect to one or more probabilistic criteria. This illustrates trade‐offs between financial costs of plans and risk, and between risk criteria for four different severities of water use restrictions. Graphical representation of alternative sequences of investments in the Pareto set helps to identify water management options for which there is a robust case for including them in the plan.
Key Points:
Estimated the probability of water restrictions under nonstationary climate
Identified water plans that meet tolerable risk criteria
Demonstrated sensitivity of plans to risk criteria and model uncertainties
Landslides are one of the most important geohazards. In 2004–2016, more than 55,000 people lost their lives to landslides and this does not include deaths caused by seismically triggered landslides. ...Overall losses were estimated to be at USD 20 billion annually. The lives of many could be saved if more had been known regarding forecasting and mitigation. Studies have shown an increasing trend in landslides occurrence and fatalities. Over recent years, landslide risk assessment has been carried out extensively by geo-scientists worldwide. This review concentrates on the societal risks posed by landslides in various countries and the risk criteria used by various parts of the world in assessing landslide risks. The landslide risk tolerance criteria are strongly governed by utilitarian concerns i.e. financial power and the need for development. In developing countries, surprisingly high levels of tolerance are proposed for landslides. The risk criteria of Hong Kong and that of the Australian Geomechanics Society are widely employed in many countries. Although various risk tolerance levels have been proposed by various nations, many of them are still not being applied in their real-life scenarios. The procedures for setting risk criteria call for a wide agreement between geo-scientists, government decision makers, and the community. Risk criteria should be developed locally with historical landslide inventory, public perception, and engineering aspects being considered.
Summary
Background
There is an emerging consensus that, as with other risks in society, zero risk for food‐allergic people is not a realistic or attainable option. Food allergy challenge data and new ...risk assessment methods offer the opportunity to develop quantitative limits for unintended allergenic ingredients which can be used in risk‐based approaches. However, a prerequisite to their application is defining a tolerable level of risk. This requires a value judgement and is ultimately a ‘societal’ decision that has to involve all relevant stakeholders.
Objective
The aim of the workshop was to bring together key representatives from the stakeholders (regulators, food industry, clinical researchers and patients), and for the first time ever discuss the definition of a tolerable level of risk with regard to allergic reactions to food.
Results
The discussions revealed a consensus that zero risk was not a realistic option and that it is essential to address the current lack of agreed action levels for cross‐contamination with allergens if food allergen management practice is to be improved. The discussions also indicated that it was difficult to define and quantify a tolerable level of risk, although both the clinical and the industry groups tried to do so. A consensus emerged that doing nothing was not a viable option, and there was a strong desire to take action to improve the current situation.
Conclusions and Clinical Relevance
Two concrete actions were suggested: (1) Action levels should be derived from the data currently available. Different scenarios should be examined and further developed in an iterative process. On the basis of this work, a tolerable level of risk should be proposed. (2) ‘One‐dose’ clinical trial with a low challenge dose should be performed in multiple centres to provide additional information about the general applicability of dose‐distribution models and help validate the threshold levels derived.
Defining of the structural robustness Wolinski, S
Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Technical sciences,
03/2013, Letnik:
61, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Different methods of quantitative assessment of structural robustness has been proposed and widely discussed in recent years. This paper starts out with an outline of the requirements and discussion ...of the conventional and risk based methods and measures of structural robustness. The probability and consequence analysis related to the assessment of robustness usually contains the statistical, fuzzy and fuzzy-statistical information on the basic variables and parameters. The new fuzzy-probabilistic index of robustness is presented in order to consider all types of available information about different hazards and consequences which influence robustness of a structure. The proposed framework for imprecise risk assessment by means of the frequency-consequences acceptance diagram and quantification of the robustness is illustrated through a numerical example
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