We started reading the ICMM Guidance and Conformance protocols with great interest and were pleased with a number of specifications we saw. Of course, an endeavor of this magnitude and scope will stir a lot of interest in the mining world. From our end, given our long experience in tailings system risks, we could not resist to compare the protocols to our day-to-day practice. We noted areas where more detailed explanations would likely benefit the mining industry and the public.…
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Convergent risk assessments integrate areas that are significant to an organization, such as operational risk generated by various hazards or compliance, within a single framework. In the meantime, convergent risk assessments suppress informational siloes and therefore tend to explicitly tackle systemic interdependencies. Convergent risk assessment A convergent risk assessment looks at a silos-free system where: physical, informational geographical, and finally logical risk information converge in a single platform. Convergent risk assessments have to be holistic by definition. We discuss the definitions…
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Business as usual definition in risk assessment, as defined in our day-to-day practice, is an unchanging state of affairs. That is, despite the occurrence of non-divergent hazards of any kind (man-made, natural). An example of business as usual and non divergent hazard For instance, the variability of any parameter as considered and specified in the design of a system is “business as usual”. Therefore that variability does not represent a hazard. For example, the variation of the oil price of…
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The discussion of terms such as Foreseeability and predictability in risk assessments is rather common. Like usual, at Riskope we like to have an extremely clear glossary, in order to avoid blunders due to miscommunication. Foreseeability and predictability in risk assessments Foreseeability is the facility to perceive, know in advance, or reasonably anticipate that damage or injury will probably ensue from acts or omissions. A foreseeable event or situation is one that can be known about or guessed before it…
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Tactical and strategic planning to mitigate divergent events is one of the themes of our next book. The term divergent does not yet appear in our glossary, as we are preparing its fourth edition. Stay tuned for the announcement of its publication. In short, hazards or exposures become divergent when they part from long term averages and “usual extremes”, both in terms of frequencies and/or magnitude. For example, a hundred-year rain event that occurs three times in a short interval…
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The ability to distinguish between different terms is a prerequisite for the acquisition of accurate knowledge, including loss prevention knowledge. Without this capacity, confusion is virtually inevitable. More generally, several words and concepts in loss prevention underscore the necessity of acquiring a specialist vocabulary making fine differentiation among seemingly related but conceptually distinct concepts. As you probably noted the paragraph above is not our writing style. As a matter of fact we only have slightly adapted the conclusion of a…
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Yes, we know, the title of this post: Risk related definitions to avoid risky confusions sounds a bit like a joke. However, we can assure that complying to these definitions will save you and your company time, money, limit liabilities and reduce chances of litigation. At the beginning of Summer we pointed out there is still major confusion even in basic definitions of risk and uncertainties. Also that occurs not only within a single industry, but, even worse, across…
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In risk management terms, forecasting the future relies on Hazard identification. Is it a science or an art? Please notice we are talking about hazard identification and not risk identification for a very specific reason. We want to avoid confusion and enable proper analysis. Others, following for example General Motors’ journey to establish a Risk Sensing function, take a short cut and try to identify risks. What can go wrong is a hazard. Hazards have consequences and the hazard-consequence couple is a…
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