Final Program - Society for Risk Analysis

T3-D.2 Resurreccion JZ, Santos JR; joost@gwu.eduGeorge Washington UniversityDEVELOPING AN INVENTORY-BASED PRIORITIZATION METH-ODOLOGY FOR ASSESSING INOPERABILITY AND ECONOMICLOSS IN INTERDEPENDENT SECTORSNatural and man-caused disasters disrupt the production of commodities andservices that are essential to the functions of infrastructure and economic sectors.The intrinsic interdependencies among these sectors trigger the propagation of disasterconsequences that often result in a wider range of inoperability and amplifiedlosses. This paper evaluates the impact of using inventory-enhanced policies on therecovery behavior among disrupted interdependent sectors. A dynamic inoperabilityinput-output model (DIIM) is extended to identify the critical sectors based on twounderlying minimization objectives, inoperability and economic loss. A dynamic crossprioritization plot (DCPP) is developed to integrate these objectives into a prioritizationtool that allows variation in the importance associated with each objective. Implementingthe methodology for the state of Virginia, a baseline inventory case revealeda high concentration of: (i) manufacturing sectors under the inoperability objective,and (ii) service sectors under the economic loss objective. Simulation of enhancedinventory policies to the manufacturing sectors reduced the recovery period by nearlya week and the total economic loss by $47.58M. The variation of importance attributedto the two objectives is demonstrated for the inventory-enhanced case. Whilethe study focuses on enhancing inventory levels in Virginia’s manufacturing sectors,complementary analysis is recommended to manage the resilience of the service sectors.The flexibility and scalability of the proposed prioritization methodology andthe resulting decision support system can also be extended to accommodate analysisin other regions as well as other disaster scenarios.M3-I.4 Rhomberg LR; lrhomberg@gradientcorp.comGradientCOMPARISON OF STRATEGIES TO STRUCTURE WEIGHT-OF-EVI-DENCE EVALUATIONSEnvironmental regulations seek a sound basis in science, yet the body of availableinformation is seldom dispositive and entails synthesis across studies conductedunder different disciplines, with different inherent strengths, shortcomings, and standardsfor well conducted studies. Conclusions must be based on uncertain inferencesand extrapolations, with choices among apparently contradictory findings, yet inactionbecause of suspended judgment or action on imperfect information have theirown negative impacts on public good. A weight-of-evidence approach is required thatattends to both consistency within disciplines and synthesis across disparate typesof studies. I review several approaches - rules-based systems, evidence-based toxicology,expert judgment elicitation, and structured hypothetico-deductive processes- and gauge their comparative utility in supporting public-health regulatory decisionmaking.Rules-based approaches can be consistent and operational, but risk codificationof conventional wisdom and succeed only to the degree that sound inference isbuilt into the rules. Evidence-based toxicology promises rigor, but in underdeterminedsystems, it provides poor basis for sound choices. Expert judgment is goodat synthesis of diverse lines of evidence, but it is nontransparent and invites criticismof choice of judges. Hypothetico-deductive systems are complex and require casespecificassembly of arguments, but promise a means to judge the relative credenceto be accorded differing interpretations - with different regulatory consequences - in away that encourages open discussion of how inferences relate to the evidence at hand.A key question is where in the regulatory decision-making process, and in whosehands, the evaluation of uncertainty of inference and the consideration of possibilities,plausibilities, and soundness of inferences should reside.M2-E.4 Rickard LN; lnr3@cornell.eduCornell UniversityLINKING THEORIES OF ATTRIBUTION, RISK PERCEPTION, ANDCOMMUNICATION TO INVESTIGATE RISK MANAGEMENT ANDSAFETY IN AN APPLIED CONTEXTDuring the past fifty years, social scientists have amassed an impressive bodyof literature to explain how individuals attribute both the causes of and the responsibilityfor phenomena: whether to “internal” traits of individuals or to “external”characteristics of the environment. To date, psychological studies linking attributionsof responsibility for accident causation, risk perception, and safety have largely consideredoccupational settings, such as factories, and everyday routines, such as driving.A second body of scholarship, however, situates attribution of responsibility in thelarger context of risk management and seeks to explain how individuals attribute responsibilityfor preventing accidents (i.e., for ensuring safety) in cultural, moral, legal,and ethical terms. While these two literatures share an attention to perceptions of risk,risk management, and risk-related behavior, no apparent research has attempted theirintegration. This research links these two approaches to attribution theory with theoriesof risk perception and communication to explore risk management and safetypromotion in an applied context. To do so, it combines social psychological conceptsused to explain causal attribution of accidents with sociological concepts relevant tounderstanding the attribution of responsibility for accident prevention. Three U.S.national parks, Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, and DelawareWater Gap National Recreation Area, provide unique settings for this mixed-methodstudy, which considers the perspectives of both park employees and visitors withrespect to visitor accidents and unintentional injuries. The presentation will offer preliminaryresults from ongoing survey and in-depth interview analysis.163