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The Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol and Operation Risk Awareness and Preparedness Rating (ORAPR)

Sustainability Assessment Protocol and Operation Risk Awareness and Preparedness Rating offer the subject to an interesting discussion. One of the challenges of Risk Assessments lies in defining proper metrics for the consequences of hazards hits. When the Risk Assessment bears on a well-defined facility, the task is relatively easy. Easier than if the study bears on large and multifaceted systems exposed to risks. Among these, for example copper theft or information warfare at national scale, or, similarly, if we are…

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Riots in Europe do not Come as a Surprise to our Clients

In March 2010 we broadcasted an update of our predictions. We originally published those predictions in November 2008 bearing on the duration and depth of the crisis in the Western World. Riots in Europe do not Come as a Surprise to our Clients Riots in Europe do not Come as a Surprise to our Clients So, please go back to our post-Lehman Brothers (November 2008) communique. We evaluated a 20% chance the recession would last past Fall 2011. In addition there…

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Results of our Poll on Cyber Warfare and Risk Based Decision Making Procedures.

We promised to publish the results of our Poll on Cyber Warfare and Risk Based Decision Making Procedures.  So here they are, for your information. Results of our Poll on Cyber Warfare and Risk Based Decision Making Procedures. Please note, all percentages are approximate, rounded up to the nearest 5%. 60% of the respondents use a well defined risk glossary. However, only 25% use well-defined risk assessment procedures and 40% expresses probabilities in non numeric ways (qualitative, indexes etc.). Almost…

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Black Swan Mania Part3

In Part 2  we examined social unrest and terrorism, of which we found only one each in the original list . We demonstrated that none of those two cases was actually a Black Swan, because they simply did not fit the definition! Now, in the same list, we see a total of 5 Economic/financial alleged Black Swans, and we are going to use the same approach of Part 2 to see if at least these comply with the definition of Black…

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Black Swan Mania Part2

From the Black Swan list we can count 1 Political/social Black Swan (Unrest in the Middle East). Now if we look at the last 200 years of Human history we can easily count at least 16 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebellions) political/social major large scale events. Even without considering two World Wars, but only “a few additional wars since then“, we get, for the sake of simplicity, to a total of around 20. So, now, the question is: how can anyone try to argue that something…

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Black Swan Mania: Using Buzzwords Can Be a Dangerous Habit

Black Swan has been a viral epidemic culminating with the economic recession. We are referring to the use of the term “Black Swan”. Indeed Black Swan Mania: Using Buzzwords Can Be a Dangerous Habit. Black Swan Mania: Using Buzzwords Can Be a Dangerous Habit Of course we are not talking about the Tchaikovsky ballet, or the recent related movie. In fact we are referring to the Black Swan Theory which refers “to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and…

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Our clients beat the trends. We are proud to contribute to their leadership.

Our clients beat the trends. We are proud to contribute to their leadership. This blogpost discusses this issue. The trigger lied in reading a Deloitte’s report. As a matter of fact, we read with a lot of interest Deloitte’s report entitled: Tracking the trends 2011, The top 10 issues mining companies will face in the coming year. The issues We summarize below the issues highlighted in Deloitte’s report: 1 Financing 2 Volatility 3 Stakeholders engagement 4 Taxes, regulations and governments…

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ALE, FMEA, FMECA, qualitative methods: is it really what we need!?

ALE, FMEA, FMECA, qualitative methods: is it really what we need!? discusses the evaluation of systems’ failure. An array of methodologies exist. Among these the are Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and the Failure Mode and Effects Criticality Analysis (FMECA). Many Risk Assessment use Annual Loss Expected (ALE) as a metric for impact or consequences. Impact analysis of every potential defect on functionality The essence of FMEA/FMECA is the impact analysis of every potential defect on functionality of the…

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