Abstracts (PDF file, 1.8MB) - Society for Risk Analysis

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SRA 2013 Annual Meeting Abstracts P.120 Rak, A*; Vogel, CM; Bass, N; Noblis Inc., US Army Public Health Command; andrew.rak@noblis.org Phase I Impact Assessment Results for 1-bromopropane and 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) The Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) Emerging Contaminants (EC) Program has a well-established three-tiered process for over-the-horizon scanning for ECs, conducting qualitative and quantitative impact assessments in critical functional areas, and developing sound risk management options. This “Scan-Watch-Action” process was used to examine potentials risks from 1-bromopropane and the insensitive high explosive NTO. Subject matter experts (SMEs) from throughout the DoD used the Emerging Contaminants Assessment System (ECAS) tool to evaluate the potential risks to DoD associated with these two mission critical chemicals. Members of the EC Program team used the Impact Assessment Criteria Assessment Tool (ICAT) to analyze SME input. Together, these two groups developed a set of initial risk management options (RMOs) within the DoD. The risks identified by the SMEs and the potential RMOs for each chemical are presented for each of five different functional areas. The uncertainties in the SME’s risk estimates are also discussed and recommendations for further analysis are presented. The conclusion of these assessments indicates that 1-bromopropoane requires significant risk management actions to mitigate possible risks from occupational exposure while NTO requires additional toxicity and environmental fate data be collected. P.110 Rao, V*; Francis, R; The George Washington University; vrao81@gwu.edu The role of statistical models in drinking water distribution system asset management A robust asset management plan needs to be in place for water utilities to effectively manage their distribution systems. Of concern to utilities are broken pipes, which can lead to bacteria entering the water system and causing illness to consumers. Typically, water utilities allocate a portion of funds every year for renewal of pipes and valves. However, pipe renewal is largely based on replacing current broken pipes, and long- term asset management planning to replace pipes is not a priority for water utilities. Water utilities are beginning to use probabilistic break models and other statistical tools to predict pipe failures. These models incorporate variables such as pipe length, diameter, age, and material. Although incorporation of these models is emerging in the water industry, their direct impact on long term asset planning remains to be seen. In addition, the effectiveness of these models is questionable, as there is currently little research done to evaluate the ability of these models to assist in asset management planning. This paper discusses the role of probabilistic pipe break models in structuring long-term asset management decisions and tradeoffs taken by drinking water utility companies. P.50 Reid, R; Loftis, B; Dwyer, S*; Kleinfelder, Inc.; sdwyer@kleinfelder.com Constraint analysis for siting solar energy projects A risk analysis methodology (constraints analysis) was developed to evaluate conditions affecting site selection for ground mounted solar photo-voltaic (PV) systems. Utility companies active in the solar market have applied this methodology in their site selection efforts to evaluate environmental, engineering, and regulatory constraints that could render a site economically or physically infeasible for development. The constraints analysis addresses up to 16 characteristics for a given site, including flooding, presence of jurisdictional waters, threatened and endangered species, sensitive habitats, regulatory environment, topography, land ownership, zoning, site access, geotechnical conditions, and distance to electrical transmission infrastructure. The primary goals of the constraints analysis are to optimize the allocation of capital and to minimize capital at risk. Presently, the constraints analysis tool is largely qualitative and relies on subjective judgments regarding each site characteristic. Approaches to advancing the constraints analysis through the use of advanced analytical tools, such as multi-criteria decision analysis and GIS, will be discussed. M4-I.5 Reilly, AC*; Guikema, SD; Johns Hopkins University; acr@jhu.edu Bayesian Multiscale Modeling of Spatial Infrastructure Performance Predictions A number of models have been developed to estimate the spatial distribution of the likelihood of infrastructure impact during a natural hazard event. For example, statistical approaches have been developed to estimate the percentage of customers without power due to a hurricane, with the estimates made at the census tract level. However, such statistical models for predicting outage rates do not fully account for the spatial structure of outage patterns, leading to predictions where adjacent regions are dissimilar. In this paper, we develop a tree-based statistical mass-balance multiscale model to smooth the outage predictions at granular levels by allowing spatially similar areas to inform one another. Granular observations are then aggregated based upon their intrinsic hierarchical spatial structure leading to courser, region-wide predictions. We use a generalized density-based clustering algorithm to extract the hierarchical spatial structure. The “noise” regions (i.e., those regions located in sparse areas) are then aggregated using a distance-based clustering approach. We demonstrate this approach using outage predictions from Hurricanes Irene and develop outage prediction maps at various levels of granularity. December 8-11, 2013 - Baltimore, MD
SRA 2013 Annual Meeting Abstracts M2-F.4 Reinhardt, JC*; Chen, X; Liu, W; Manchev, P; Paté-Cornell, ME; Stanford University; reinhardt@stanford.edu Project Fox: Taming Asteroid Risks Understanding and mitigating the risks posed by asteroids is important to the scientific and policy-making communities, as near earth objects threaten human lives and may threaten the very existence of human civilization. Qualitative and quantitative studies have been done to assess such risks, and some reasonable point estimates have been proposed. However, due to the low probability/high consequence nature of asteroid risks, these measures provide limited actionable insights and may even lead to false confidence when interpreted inappropriately. Project Fox aims to provide a probabilistic model that evaluates the collective threat from asteroids events. We implement a modularized simulation architecture that takes probabilistic inputs to construct the probability distribution of rare events efficiently. The model suggests that although the point estimates of annual death rates due to asteroid events have small numerical values, the probability of incurring a catastrophic loss of human lives and property damages is significant. Furthermore, the probability of a cataclysm scenario (an impact event with globally reaching consequences) due to asteroid impacts is far from negligible, and the current understanding of impactors that could trigger global consequences underestimates the actual risk by leaving a large fraction of cataclysmic risk scenarios unaccounted for. Specifically, we find that the majority of global consequence risk is attributable to asteroids between 300 and 1000 meters in diameter, signaling the importance of missions to observe and track asteroids in this range. Finally, “civil-defense” counter-measures mitigate the risk of human casualties from asteroid impacts to some small level, but they are certainly not a panacea. Because of the potentially poor performance of civil defense methods, further analysis on the effectiveness and feasibility of space missions to interdict asteroids are warranted. W2-F.3 Reiss, R; Exponent; rreiss@exponent.com What can we learn and apply from journal peer review? Scientific peer review is a critical component of the regulatory process. The peer review model has been used in the evaluation of scientific papers for publications long before peer review was used for regulatory programs. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask if there are lessons from the journal peer review process that can be applied to regulatory peer review. Some of the issues that will be discussed include the selection of peer reviewers, achievement of balance of perspectives in peer review, and the requirements to respond and modify analyses based on peer review. Another area for improvement is the process of revision that occurs after a peer review. The journal model of accepting, rejecting, or sending papers back for more work, may provide a possible model for regulatory peer reviews. Another topic that will be discussed is a possible model for enhanced review of select regulations that are of high value, such as sending a select number of assessments automatically to the National Academy of Sciences each year. All of these ideas have to be balanced with the need for timely assessments. W4-G.1 Reitman, F*; Sun, T-J; Beatty, P; LeHuray, AP; Hammon, TL; Juba, MH; Palermo, C; Lewis, RJ; White, RD; 1 Shell; 2 Chevron; 3 American Petroleum Institute; 4 Naphthalene Council; 5 ConocoPhillips; 6 Koppers, Inc.; 7, 8 ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences, Inc. 9 American Petroleum Institute; alehuray@comcast.net Naphthalene Rodent Inhalation Bioassays and Assessment of Risk to Exposed Humans: Problem Formulation The National Toxicology Program (NTP) conducted 2-year naphthalene inhalation cancer bioassays in B6C3F1 mice (1992) and in F-344 rats (2000) and observed cancers in the mouse lung and the rat nose. Naphthalene exposure was not previously thought to pose a cancer risk, however, based on these two NTP studies EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) released a draft cancer risk assessment in 2004 which proposed naphthalene as “likely to be carcinogenic in humans”, with a calculated cancer potency 10 to 40-fold greater than benzene. However, the available human and mechanistic toxicity data did not support the association between naphthalene exposure and cancer, particularly nasal cancer. A 2006 Naphthalene State- of- Science Symposium (NS3), independently organized and funded by EPA, Naphthalene Research Committee (NRC) members and others, provided a rigorous review of the state -of-science for cancer risk assessment. The NS3 raised concerns in extrapolating these rodent bioassay results to human cancer risks including: (1) the NTP bioassays were conducted at high vapor concentrations above the Maximum Tolerated Dose, complicating low-dose extrapolation, (2) naphthalene likely does not represent a classical genotoxic carcinogen, (3) cytotoxicity and cellular proliferation appears to have played a role in the carcinogenic responses, (4) tumor formation rates at environmental, noncytotoxic exposure levels cannot be meaningfully predicted by simple linear extrapolation from the tumor rates observed in the rodent bioassays, and (5) there are important differences in naphthalene metabolism and toxicity between rodents and humans. Based on the study recommendations from NS3, industry associations and individual companies formed the NRC to co-sponsor research that strives to improve naphthalene risk assessments. The NRC’s objective has been to collect data to properly evaluate the carcinogenic potential of naphthalene. T1-F.1 Renn, O; University of Stuttgart; ortwin.renn@sowi.uni-stuttgart.de Emerging Risks: Concepts and Approaches Emerging risks denote future threats where the potential losses as well as the probability distribution of their occurrence are either unknown or contested. Emerging risks may be further broken down into three distinct, but overlapping categories, based on their main characteristic at a certain stage. These categories are described as follows: (i) Emerging technologies with emerging risk profile based on high uncertainty and lack of knowledge about potential impacts and interactions with the affected risk absorbing systems; (ii) Emerging technological systems with emerging interactions and systemic dependencies. The main issue here is the not the risk of the technologies (that may be known or well estimated) but the interactions of these risk (and also benefits) with other types of risks or activities that could lead to non-linear impacts and surprises; and (iii): Established technologies in a new emerging context or environment: The main problem here is that familiar technologies are operated in a new context or in different organizational settings that may change both the probability as well as the magnitude of potential impacts. One could also include here risks driven by complacency and overconfidence on one’s own ability to cope with sudden crisis. Conventional approaches to projecting loss size, relative frequencies or probability distributions over time or severity of consequences are usually ineffective if applied to emerging risks. Furthermore, attempts to assess emerging risks with technical or scientific instruments may prove futile as scientific understanding of emerging risks can change rapidly. Therefore, adaptability and flexibility are vital to manage emerging risks in terms of individual, social, and economic impacts. This paper aims at developing a conceptual orientation for risk managers to better address emerging risks and be better prepared for the challenges of the future. December 8-11, 2013 - Baltimore, MD
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