Methods of Technical Risk Assessment in a Regional Context

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Kröger
Professor and Head of former Laboratory for Safety Analysis
Managing Director of ETH Risk Center
Founding Rector of IRGC(International Risk Governance Council) in Geneva.

Time/Place of lecture: Tuesday, 13-15 h / CHN D42

Teaching Assistant: Cen Nan

Content and learning target: Welcome to the website of the course "Methods of Technical Risk Assessment in a Regional Context". The course addresses risk and vulnerability issues of complex human-made systems within the context of natural and social environment at regional level. It offers basic principles and methodical frameworks to identify, assess and govern risks and vulnerabilities of major technical systems as well as potential interactions among them and/or superpositions. This all relates to accidents triggered by technical and human failures, external impacts or malicious attacks. The students will become acquainted with 'system thinking' and methods/models/data/tools for risk and vulnerability analysis as well as with approaches for tolerability assessment. They will gain experience in applying various analytical instruments, also to give answers to the adequacy of risk reducing measures and to find more robust solutions.

Presentation Slides

1. 20/9/2011: Introduction

2. 27/9/2011: Challenges to regional assessment, defining a region and systems within conceptual and methodical frameworks

3. 04/10/2011 and 11/10/2011: Methods for Hazard Identification / Methods for delineation of event sequences and estimation of frequencies (Fault/Event Trees)

5. 25/10/2011: Human Factors

6. 01& 08/11/2011: Common Cause Failures and geographically distributed events (seismic hazard analysis)

7. 15/11/2011: Techniques for source term estimation; impact assessment ; effects of countermeasures; representation of risk information

8. 21/11/2011: Advanced methods for complex systems modeling and simulation (Petri Nets, network theory)

9. 29/11/2011: Advanced methods for complex systems modeling and simulation (object-oriented/hybrid modeling approaches)

10. 06/12/2011: Principles and methods for risk evaluation

10. 13/12/2011: Concept of vulnerability and basic methods for vulnerability assessment

11. 20/12/2011: Transportation of dangerous goods

Supplementary Material & References

• Kröger W., Zio E., Vulnerable Systems , Springer, ISBN 978-0-85729-654-2, 2011
• Gheorghe, A.V., R. Mock, and W. Kröger, Risk assessment of regional systems.
  Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 2000. 70(2): p. 141-156. [.pdf]
  
• Tim Bedford and Roger Cooke. Probabilistic Risk Analysis: Foundations and Methods. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Patrick D.T. O'Connor. Practical Reliability Engineering. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2003.
• Marvin Rausand, Arnljot Hoyland. System Reliability Theory - Models, Statistical Methods, and Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.,
  2004.
• Mohammad Modarres. Risk Analysis in Engineering : Techniques, Tools, and Trends. Taylor & Francis, Inc., 2006.
• Ian Lerche and Walter Glaesser. Environmental Risk Assessment: Quantitative Measures, Anthropogenic Influences, Human Impact. Springer, 2006.
• Hiromitsu Kumamoto. Satisfying safety goals by probabilistic risk assessment. Springer, 2007.
• I.A. Papazoglou, O.N. Aneziris. Master Logic Diagram: method for hazard and initiating event identification in process plants. Journal of Hazardous Materials A97 (2003) 11–30. [.pdf]
• NASA Fault Tree Handbook, 2002. This can be downloaded from here.
• Albert- Laszlo Barabasi, Taming Complexity, Nature physics, Vol. 1, November 2005. [.pdf]
  
• J. M. Ottino, Engineering complex systems, Nature Vol. 427, January 2004. [.pdf]
  
• J. M. Ottino, Speech: Engineering complex systems and complex systems engineering. [.mov]
  
• Jessica L. Green, et. al, Complexity in Ecology and Conservation: Mathematical, Statistical, and Computational Challenges, BioScience - June 2005 / Vol. 55 No. 6. [.pdf]

Risk Analysis Recources

Important Journals

• Reliability Engineering and System Safety.
• IEEE Transactions on Reliability.
• Safety Science.
• Risk:Health, Safety and Environment.
• The Journal of Risk Research.
• Risk, Decision and Policy.
  
  

Professional Organizations

• Society of Reliability Engineers (SRE).
• IEEE Reliability Society.
• The International Association for Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management (IAPSAM).
• The European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA).
• The European Safety, Reliability & Data Association.
• Society for Risk Analysis (SRA).

Institutes

The Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC) - European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC).

• Reference Reports