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

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SRA 2013 Annual Meeting Abstracts T4-I.3 Bekera, B*; Francis, RA; Omitaomu, O; GWU, ORNL; btty@email.gwu.edu Drought Forecasting and Resilience Analysis of Nuclear Power Plants Infrastructure Climate change can affect nuclear power plants through increased temperature and increased incidence of drought. Due to their reliance on water for reactor cooling, if water temperature increases or water resource availability is reduced due to drought, the plant may be forced to dial back on production or even shutdown completely. The objective of this research is to develop risk profiles for the some of the existing and proposed power plants within the Tennessee River basin. In doing so, we hope to provide a valuable insight for making risk-informed investment decisions in this critical infrastructure sector. In this paper, we demonstrate how an uncertainty-weighed systems resilience metric developed by the authors may be used to assess impacts of drought on operations of nuclear power plants. This resilience metric integrates absorptive capacity, adaptive capacity and rapidity service restoration for a system facing unlikely but highly disruptive phenomena such as drought. This is achieved by modeling the system’s response to drought using a compound Poisson process. Finally, we discuss potential implications of our findings for updating facility siting techniques in order to account for imminent scenarios in foreseeable future. T1-A.5 Bell, MZ*; Yang, ZJ; State University of New York at Buffalo, State University of New York at Buffalo; mzbell@buffalo.edu Nuclear media discourse post-Fukushima: The state of media coverage pertaining to nuclear energy before and after the Fukushima 2011 nuclear incident Public and lay perceptions of nuclear energy have long been studied, and so too has media representation of nuclear energy, often cited to be either heavily scaremongering or deceptively rose-tinted in its portrayals. These studies of risk perception and media content have often centered on certain risk events such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. Given the timely opportunity, this paper seeks to continue this legacy of nuclear risk studies taking the recent example of the Fukushima Daiichi 2011 incident to explore the ways in which a new nuclear risk affects the representation of ‘nuclear energy’, seeking to understand whether representations in three major US newspapers are different before and after the Fukushima accident. Results show that views represented in the media are less positive during 2011 but the rebound effect may be present with portrayals becoming more positive in 2012. There is also evidence in the media of support in continuance of nuclear energy despite Fukushima, with fewer mentions of alternative sources in 2012. We also see more discussion of natural hazard concerns regarding nuclear energy. The overall message seems to be that Fukushima has had an impact on the newspaper discourse, yet the media continues to see the nuclear revival as pivotal to the energy scene. W3-C.3 Belova, A*; Narayan, T; Brown, L; Haskell, J; Bozeman, S; Lamb, J; Abt Associates Inc; abelova@gmail.com A Framework to Assess Aflatoxin Public Health Impacts in Developing Countries with Application to Nigeria and Tanzania Aflatoxins are naturally occurring poisons produced mainly by the Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus fungi that thrive in hot, humid, and drought-prone climates. They are commonly found in developing countries. Aflatoxins affect staple crops and are detectable only by specialized testing. Chronic exposure to B1 aflatoxins (AFB1) causes hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and is linked to cirrhosis, immune suppression, and stunting. Due to low public awareness, ineffective food safety standards, and food security issues in the developing countries, consumption of aflatoxin-contaminated food produced by local agriculture sector occurs. To assess the magnitude of the resulting public health damage, we developed a health impacts framework at the country-level. We applied it in Nigeria and Tanzania, focusing on maize and groundnuts. We quantified HCC incidence due to aflatoxin consumption, accounting for hepatitis B prevalence and consumption variability by age, sex, and geography, and monetized the damage using a benefits transfer. For Nigeria we estimated an AFB1 contamination level of 67ppb, suggesting that 7,761 HCC cases out of 10,130 total HCC cases estimated in 2010 were attributable to aflatoxin exposure. The monetized damage was $380-$3,174 million (in 2010 USD), with the high estimate being ~1.6% of Nigerian GDP in 2010. In Tanzania, AFB1 prevalence is low, but exposure could be significant due to high maize consumption (~400-500 g/day). At the Tanzania AFB1 standard of 5ppb, we estimated 546 excess HCC cases, or ~1/3 of the total estimated HCC cases in 2010. The monetized damage at the AFB1 level of 5ppb was $18-$147 million (in 2010 USD). A sensitivity analysis using zero hepatitis B prevalence resulted in a 3x reduction in health damage. Our damage estimates for various contamination levels could serve as guidelines for the size of a government program to reduce the aflatoxin risks (via standard enforcement, control measure subsidies, immunization). T2-K.4 Belzer, RB; Regulatory Checkbook; belzer@regulatorycheckbook.org How Many Substances Are Illegally Listed in the Biennial Report on Carcinogens? The National Toxicology Program (NTP) attempts to publish a biennial Report on Carcinogens, colloquially abbreviated as the “RoC.” The RoC, especially the 12th Edition published in 2011, has proved to be highly controversial. In a recent monograph (Belzer, 2012), I demonstrated that the core defect of the RoC is the listing criteria used by NTP to determine whether a substance is a “known” or “reasonably anticipated” human carcinogen. In particular, the listing criteria cannot be interpreted scientifically because they have no scientific content. In lieu of science, NTP personnel subjectively interpret ambiguous legal thresholds (e.g., “sufficient evidence,” “adequate evidence”) in an undisclosed, non-transparent, and non-reproducible manner. Moreover, the NTP need not provide any evidence, much less demonstrate scientifically, that there is a causal relationship between the purported positive evidence and human carcinogenicity. The reason is the listing criteria are written in a way that implies causality if the NTP determines that the evidence is “sufficient,” “adequate,” or in certain circumstances, “less than sufficient.” By law, before a substance may be listed, the NTP also must show that “a significant number of persons residing in the United States are exposed” to it. However, substance profiles in the RoC generally do not include this information. Perhaps surprisingly, the absence of exposure information has not been a source of controversy. This paper reviews the 240 substance profiles in the 12th edition of the RoC to ascertain how many do not contain the exposure information required by law. It is inferred that each of these listings is illegal by statute. December 8-11, 2013 - Baltimore, MD
SRA 2013 Annual Meeting Abstracts M3-C.4 Ben-Haim, Y; Technion ; yakov@technion.ac.il What Military Strategy can Teach Us about Risk-Management and Uncertainty War entails vast risks and uncertainties. Risk managers can learn valuable lessons from the disputes among military theorists. We discuss a foundational dispute between Clauswitz and Jomini in their attempts to understand Napoleon's overwhelming military success. What was the key to his military invincibility? Clauswitz felt that it is futile to seek governing rules or patterns or laws of successful military strategy. The dominant factors in war, according to Clauswitz, are uncertainty and friction (by which he meant the inherent resistance of reality to the will of men at war). Jomini disagreed. He felt that, while war is not a science like the study of nature, it nonetheless has patterns and rules that can be discovered. He felt that he uncovered the rules that made Napoleon so successful. In modern language we would say that Jomini identified successful methods of operational art: rules for the manipulation of large field units. The main claim of this talk is that the analysis, and even more so the management, of risk, must be approached in the tradition of Clauswitz far more than of Jomini. It is the uniqueness and uncertainty of risk situations that present the special challenges that risk analysts and mangers must face. Once a risk becomes well known and thoroughly understood it is no longer a risk, and it is managed by a routine. Risks are "risky" precisely because of the endless possibility for surprise. Sound science, careful measurement, accurate monitoring and reporting, are all crucial. Nonetheless, a successful risk professional is able to analyze and manage uncertainty, variability and surprise (info-gap theory is one tool). This is very Clauswitzian and not Jominian at all. M2-H.2 Bennett, SP*; Waters, JF; Howard, K; Baker, H; McGinn, TJ; Wong, DY; U.S. Department of Homeland Security; steve.bennett@hq.dhs.gov Indicators and warnings for biological events: enhanced biosurveillance through the fusion of pre-hospital data. The United States is vulnerable to a range of threats that can impact human, agricultural, or environmental health. Managing risks from covert or naturally-occurring, accidental, or deliberate biological events such as bioterrorism or emerging infectious disease or bioterrorism is difficult to accomplish through activities that attempt to reduce these events’ likelihood of occurrence. Instead, activities that mitigate these risks largely focus on reducing, managing, or limiting the consequences of biological events once they begin to occur. To do this effectively requires the earliest possible warning that an event is occurring, as well as continuing shared situational awareness throughout the event, to enable effective decision making regarding what management actions should be taken. In this presentation, we will describe advances in the Department of Homeland Security’s National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) towards integrating and fusing early pre-hospital health data to provide early indicators and warnings. In addition, we will discuss initial concepts for the development of a risk and decision analysis framework to support the use of early warning signals and ongoing event characterization and decision support. M4-I.4 Benouar, D*; Rovins, J; University of Science and Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB); dbenouar@gmail.com Forensic disaster investigations (FORIN), a new approach to learn lessons from disasters: A case study of the 2001 Algiers (Algeria) Flood and Debris flow Disasters are increasingly being understood as ‘processes’ and not discreet ‘events’. Moreover, the causes of disasters are driven by complex engineering, socio-economic, socio-cultural, and various geophysical factors. Such interacting driving factors, occurring across a range of temporal and spatial scales, combine in numerous ways to configure disaster risks. Using some selected disasters in Africa, the dynamics of such risks and their configurations will be explored using a new approach and methodology, namely Forensic Disaster Investigations (also called FORIN studies). Forensic task is perhaps similar to solving a picture of a disaster puzzle. Initially, there are dozens or even hundreds of apparently disorganized pieces piled when examined individually, each piece may not provide much information. Methodically, the various pieces are sorted and patiently fitted together in a logical context taking into account all the parameters. Slowly, an overall picture of the disaster emerges. When a significant portion of the disaster puzzle has been solved, it then becomes easier to see where the remaining pieces fit. The Integrated Research on Disaster Risk programme is proposing new methodologies to examine the root issues surrounding the increase in disaster cost both human and economic.This paper attempts, as a case study, to investigate the Algiers (Algeria) floods and debris flows of 10 November 2001 which caused the loss of more than 714 human lives, injured more than 312, made missing 116 and about 10 000 were homeless, damaging more than 1500 housing units and scores of schools, bridges and public works. The objective is to dig more deeply into the causes of disasters in an integrated, comprehensive, transparent, and investigative or forensic style. To establish a sound basis for analysis, FORIN relies upon the actual evidence found and applies accepted scientific methodologies and principles to interpret the disaster in all its facets. Often, the analysis requires the simultaneous application of several scientific disciplines. T4-C.1 Benromdhane, S.A.*; Hubbell, B.J.; US EPA, OAQPS; benromdhane.souad@epa.gov Air pollution mixtures and related health endpoints - A multipollutant risk assessment framework Abstract Air pollution regulatory and research strategies have largely focused on single pollutants, groups of chemically related pollutants, e.g. volatile organic compounds, or source-related pollutants, e.g. mobile source emissions. However, population exposures occur in locations with complex mixtures resulting from multiple sources of emissions and containing both gases and particles. Because most epidemiological studies focus on linear statistical models which do not account for interactions between pollutants, estimates of risk can suffer from biases and imprecision due to confounding from co-pollutants, or from incomplete model specification. This can lead to difficulties in interpreting the results for individual pollutants, and can potentially bias estimates in risk analyses conducted using those results. These biases can be in the estimates of risk for individual pollutants, as well as estimates of total risks across groups of pollutants. This presentation intends to evaluate the current single pollutant focused risk assessment paradigm and identify strengths and weaknesses that can be utilized to guide the transition to a multipollutant framework. A multipollutant conceptual scheme for toxicity characterization based on mode of action is illustrated in Figure 1. This conceptual model shows how multiple pollutants could contribute additively or synergistically to a specific health endpoint. More comprehensive conceptual models based on the principles of exposure and risk analysis are needed to help inform the development of future multipollutant epidemiology studies; these conceptual models can also form the basis for an improved multipollutant exposure and risk analysis framework. December 8-11, 2013 - Baltimore, MD
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