Answer to cognitive biases, oversimplified assessments, vanishing flights and real life lessons

Answer to cognitive biases, oversimplified assessments, vanishing flights and real life lessons

We were delighted to receive the following comment related to our last post  on LinkedIn: Answer to cognitive biases, oversimplified assessments, vanishing flights and real life lessons:

“… Your story captures very well the resultant false sense of security that can develop from the very success we all work so hard to achieve. Another dimension is the dangerous thought that we can survive the unthinkable event. This can often be the case when  significant profits are possible; so a business “can afford” to get through it. Well yes, a business will get through it; but what about those who didn’t. The rig workers, the airline or automobile passengers. The cognitive biases and simplified assessments you note can have very high costs indeed. Survivable for some maybe. But our objective is not to just survive, it is often to add value. That is more then just survive.”

Risks vs mitigations, BACT, ALARA,, ALARP

We could spend hours positively adding to these comment. However, we focus today on the concepts of “false sense of security”, tolerance, societal tolerance hinted by our reader.

“False sense of security”, tolerance, societal tolerance

In our paper Can we stop misrepresenting reality to the public and Is it true that PIGs Fly when Evaluating Risks of Tailings Management Systems? we tackled the problem posed by poorly structured and poorly communicated risk assessments. Although the papers appeared in mining conferences, they apply to any industry, worldwide. We first focused the attention on misleading and fuzzy commonly used risk assessments methods. Then we looked at lack of communication and conflict of interest. Finally we attempted to explain why we, humans, keep merrily using ill-conceived methods.

No one should confuse corporate tolerance and societal tolerance as they are very different. At Riskope we have tested and proven the concept and published papers on the subject (Factual and Foreseeable Reliability of Tailings Dams and Nuclear Reactors: a Societal Acceptability Perspective and NAGOYA to be published in two weeks, which will be the object of more posts soon).

What should a societally acceptable risk assessment include?

In a 2013 landmark decision by the Mackenzie Valley Review Board in Canada on the Giant Mine Environmental Remediation defined in Appendix D what a Risk Assessment that would be acceptable to “the people” should include. That “checklist” includes the evaluation of holistic risks in a clear and rational, transparent way. It included their comparison to a societally agreed tolerance threshold and many other commonly disregarded points.

It is heart warming to see that corporations around the world are developing strong social awareness and are following this path. At Riskope we have developed a specific methodology that makes it all possible. The name is ORE (Optimum Risk Estimates). The adjective “optimum” is there to show that whatever we do, we have to strive towards reasonable and sustainable systems. In those systems we should balance the desire to protect with the desire to expand, make a good living, in full respect of all the stakeholders’ interests. We deploy ORE for alternative selection (Risk based decision making) related to complex logistic of hazardous substances by railroad and trucking.

Tagged with: Giant Mine Environmental Remediation, LinkedIn, Mackenzie Valley Review Board, Optimum Risk Estimates, societal tolerance, tolerance

Category: Consequences, Crisis management, Risk analysis, Risk management