Risk Assessment: Theory, Methods, and Applications

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Risk is a curious and complex concept. In a sense it is unreal in that it is always concerned, with the future, with possibilities, with what has not yet happened.

—Elms (1992)

1.1 INTRODUCTION

If you ask ten people what they mean by the word risk, you will most likely get ten different answers. The same inconsistency also prevails in newspapers and other media. A brief search for the word risk in some Internet newspapers gave the results in Table 1.1. In some of the statements, the word risk can be replaced with chance, likelihood, or possibility. In other cases, it may be synonymous with hazard, threat, or danger. The situation is not much better in the scientific community, where the interpretation is almost as varying as among the general public. A brief search in risk assessment textbooks, journal articles, standards, and guidelines will easily prove that this applies also for the specialists in risk assessment.

In 1996, the prominent risk researcher Stan Kaplan received the Distinguished Award from the Society of Risk Analysis. To express his gratitude, Kaplan gave a talk to the plenary session at the society's annual meeting. In the introduction to this talk, he said:¹

Table 1.1 The word risk as used in some Internet newspapers (in May 2010).

… the government would risk a humiliating defeat …… people judged to be at high risk of having a fall …… there's no simple equation for predicting divorce risk …… investors are willing to take on a high risk ...