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Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Resilience Cont’d (3rd part).

In this post we keep analyzing some buzz-words and their meaning. Resilience Cont’d (3rd part) is today’s subject. The prior post discussed “antifragile”. Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Resilience Cont’d (3rd part). Another buzz-word: resilience. Following the dictionary, resilience is the ability to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens (so, it would be a subset of antifragile, as it contemplates return to normality, but not thriving out of the mishap). Resilience is also the ability of…

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Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Antifragile Black Swan Cont’d (2nd part).

Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Antifragile Black Swan A new word: Antifragile. It seems like Mr. Taleb has coined a new word: “antifragile.” “Fragile” is the opposite of “robust”. Taleb adds the antifragile word to describe a system that thrives—its performance actually improves— under stress. Taleb’s new book mostly considers the notions of fragility and antifragility in biological, medical, economic, and political systems. Under that definition it is difficult to imagine an engineering systems that would be antifragile? Engineers have…

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Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Reliability

Some Buzz-words and their meaning. Reliability A little bit of history and a couple definitions. There was a time where professors in good engineering schools around the world used to state that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Actually, most likely the Romans and many military engineers like Marechal de Vauban (who were also the first “serious” geotechnical engineers around ‘600-‘700, by the way) were also designing following that principle. The idea was: in a system…

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Car accidents, cold, more examples of biased and misleading FMEA/PIGs results

Reviewing Car accidents, cold, more examples of biased and misleading FMEA/PIGs results adds to prior information published in this blogpost. In particular we show how results of a Risk assessment matrix 5×5 or 4×4 can actually cloud our judgement. Car accidents, cold, more examples of biased and misleading FMEA/PIGs results Dear X, Thank you for asking us to review your draft Risk Assessment for the ACME Inc. operation. I reviewed your FMEA/PIG risk matrix 4×4 and have the following remarks. Note if…

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A modern Risk Manager and an Engineer have a heated discussion about FMEA/PIGs, common practices and what a rational and transparent quantitative risk assessment should encompass

A modern Risk Manager and an Engineer have a heated discussion about FMEA/PIGs. The dialogue below is an excerpt of the course entitled “Risk-Based Management Of Tailings, Waste Rock, And Heap Leach Facilities” that Riskope and Jack Caldwell (Robertson Geoconsultants) are co-writing for Edumine. Risk Manager and an Engineer have a heated discussion about FMEA/PIGs, and risk matrix 5×5 The dialogue format is used as a “literary device” to allow the reader to hear different “voices” from the industry and…

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Social Acceptability criteria, winning-back public trust require drastic overhaul of risk assessments common practice

Social Acceptability criteria, winning-back public trust require drastic overhaul of risk assessments common practice Riskope was present at the MineWaste2013 Conference in Banff (Nov. 3-6, 2013). Riskope presented a paper (Factual and Foreseeable Reliability of Tailings Dams and Nuclear Reactors -a Societal Acceptability Perspective). The paper compares “historic” rate of failure (major accidents only) of tailings dams and nuclear reactors world-wide to well known, previously published technical and societal acceptability criteria. We quantitatively compared the risks (focusing on casualties consequences…

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Is it possible to quantify the social perception of an industrial accident risks? Lesson from the Mont Blanc highway tunnel fire tragedy.

Is it possible to quantify the social perception of an industrial accident risks? In a recent research study we used the Mont Blanc Tunnel 1999 tragic fire accident as an example. The aim was to illustrate the concepts of social perception quantification. This approach could be applied to any accident, in any industry, while developing a holistic risk assessment. The research paper we have crafted discusses how a risk assessment could have been carried out before the accident. It examines…

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Lac Megantic, biases, incomplete consequences, and regulations

Lac Megantic, biases, incomplete consequences, and regulations Lac Megantic, Canada, railroad derailment tragedy reportedly brought direct destruction and casualties on a radius of 200-400m when a number of hydrocarbon tank cars exploded. Once again media and public opinion realized later on that the immense suffering endured by the community extends it’s shadow far away from the point and time of the tragedy with far reaching indirect consequences (exclusions zone, logistic, loss of market share, bankruptcies, increase of jobless, depression, environmental,…

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