It is interesting to read about Tailings dams failures insurance perspective. Riskope helped solving miners’ insurance denial issues for the last 15 years. Riskope also recognizes the issue is becoming much wider than mining due, for example to climate change impacting residential and private parties. Tailings dams Recent papers from Willis Towers Watson quote tailings dams failures frequency at two failure per year. In a 2013 paper (Oboni, C., Oboni F., Factual and Foreseeable Reliability of Tailings Dams and Nuclear Reactors -a…
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At R&R Conference we heard the representative of a major mutual insurance company talking about Resilience, sustainability and insurance. Resilience, sustainability and insurance Resilience was defined as the ability to recover after an accident, the ability to withstand disruption and rebound quickly. The talk also discussed sustainability as it was defined by the UN in 1987. The UN Brundtland Commission was officially dissolved in December 1987 after releasing Our Common Future. The text, also known as the Brundtland Report, coined…
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Hurricanes, Reactive Politics, Risk Assessments Hurricane Hazel killed a dozen of people around Toronto in 1954. In the aftermath flood plains development was banned and conservation authorities were created. After the flooding in Calgary, Toronto, Hurricane Sandy last year in the US and the ominous Katrina in 2005 it seems a good time to ask ourselves if we are doing the right things, enough of them, soon enough? Calgary could be the biggest flood coverage payout in Alberta history. In…
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A few phrases from the paper named Risk-management lessons from the volcanic ash cloud are copied below in italics, then commented: …Conventional thinking about risk management holds that risks are mainly local and routine—that it is possible to list all the negative events that could happen, determine their probability based on past experience… Risk-management lessons from the volcanic ash cloud Two common wrong behaviors are indicated in the phrase above: 1) risks to be included in a risk assessment are not…
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We will discuss today why Force Majeure clauses in contracts should be optimized to reduce costs and litigation potential. Force Majeure clauses in contracts should be optimized to reduce costs and litigation potential. Indeed, any time spent in the aftermath of a mishap “discussing” if the event was Force Majeure, negligence or had other causes severely impacts operations. In addition it can significantly increase the costs of consequences. Thus the need to optimize the Force Majeure formulation. If it was…
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