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

SRA 2013 Annual Meeting Abstracts
M3-C.1 Aven, T*; Zio, E; University of Stavanger, Norway;
terje.aven@uis.no
Foundational issues in risk assessment and management
The risk assessment and risk management fields still suffer
from a lack of clarity on many key issues. Lack of consensus on
even basic terminology and principles, lack of proper support
and justification of many definitions and perspectives adopted
lead to an unacceptable situation for operatively managing risk
with confidence and success. In this talk we discuss the needs,
obstacles and challenges for the establishment of a strong
foundation for risk assessment and risk management. We i)
review and discuss the present situation and ii) reflect on how
to best proceed in the future, to develop the risk discipline in
the directions needed.
T4-J.3 Axelrad, DA; Chiu, W; Dockins, C*; US EPA;
dockins.chris@epa.gov
Recent Efforts for Aligning Risk Assessment and
Economic Analysis at EPA
Risk assessment has long been a tool for informing risk
management decisions and setting regulatory standards. In
recent years, however, there has been increased attention on
how current risk assessments align with benefit-cost and other
economic analyses. For example, the Science and Decisions
report from the National Academy of Sciences emphasizes the
utility of risk assessment for decision making, including its role
in providing quantitative estimates of risk that can inform
economic analysis of regulatory alternatives. This is a departure
from the context in which some risk assessment methods and
tools have been developed. While cancer risk assessments at
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provide
quantitative estimates of risk, assessments of other human
health effects often do not, particularly when there is not a
large body of epidemiological evidence. This results in benefits
estimates that are incomplete and biased downward, which is
an important consideration for regulatory actions where
quantified benefits analysis is required by statute. Even when
not specifically required, quantitative benefits analysis of risk
reductions provides valuable information for decision makers
and to the public. Over the past year economists, risk assessors,
and other analysts at EPA have engaged in a series of activities
and projects to enhance communication across these disciplines
in order to better align risk assessment outputs with the needs
of benefits analysis. This presentation provides a review of
these efforts and key findings that have emerged from it. It
provides lessons with respect to how risk assessment and
economic analysis can be better aligned to support improved
information for decision making.
W4-J.4 Aylward, LL; Summit Toxicology, LLP;
laylward@summittoxicology.com
Do changes in exposure lead to changes in outcomes?
Challenges in ascertaining benefits from reductions in
environmental exposure levels
Changes in environmental chemical exposure levels (both
increases and decreases) can be measured for many chemicals.
Such changes can be tracked as temporal trends in
environmental media concentrations, or, more directly, through
temporal trends in biomonitored concentrations of chemicals in
human blood or urine. This talk discusses challenges in
ascertaining whether such changes have led to measurable
health benefits. Case studies are used to illustrate challenges in
tracking changes in outcome prevalence or incidence over time,
biases introduced in the risk assessment process, and other
factors that may result in difficulty ascertaining whether
predicted health benefits have actually resulted from changes
in exposure levels. Case study chemicals include dioxins, DDT,
brominated flame retardants, and methyl mercury.
T2-C.1 Azarkhil, M*; Mosleh, A; Reliability Engineering
Program, University of Maryland at College Park;
mandana.azarkhil@gmail.com
Modeling Dynamic Behavior of Complex Systems
Operating Crew during Accidents
In time of accidents, operating teams of high-risk environments
are responsible for the ultimate decision-making, management
and control of extremely upset situations and are subject to
significant amount of team interactions. Individual human
errors if being aggregated in team interaction loops can result
in major hazards and complex failure modes. We developed a
systematic method to explicitly model the operating crew as a
social interactive unit and investigate their dynamic behavior
under critical situations via simulation. The ultimate goal is to
study the effects of team factors and team dynamics on the risk
of a complex and safety critical system; the main focus being on
team errors, associated causes and error management inside
the team and their impact on team performance. The
framework is used to model and evaluate team activities such
as collaborative information collection, establishing shared
mental models, team decision making and combined action
execution. The crew model consists of models of individual
operators, team communication, team error management and
detailed causal maps to capture the effects of associated
performance shaping factors on operator/s functions. An object
based modeling methodology is applied to represent system
elements and different roles and behaviors within the operating
team. IDAC cognitive model is used as the basic infrastructure
for the individual operator model, and scenario generation
follows typical dynamic probabilistic risk assessment
methodologies. We developed a customized library in MATLAB
Simulink which facilitates the modeling process for similar
applications of the methodology. The method capabilities are
demonstrated through building and simulating a simplified
model of a steam/power generating plant. Different
configurations of team characteristics and influencing factors
have been simulated and compared. The results are also
compared with several theoretical models and empirical
studies.
December 8-11, 2013 - Baltimore, MD