Whitman Archives

What Fukushima (2010) nuclear accident, the Twin Towers (9/11) terror attack, deadly traffic accidents and Aquila earthquake (Italy), hurricanes have in common?

In this blogpost we attempt an update of Whitman’s and ANCOLD tolerance/acceptability curves. These link casualties from man-made or natural catastrophes, large dams failures to a “tolerable” annual probability. The attempt shows evidence for a G8-wide societal acceptability which has only slightly changed since the original studies by Whitman.. We have already discussed many times how well-balanced and sustainable decisions can only be taken if risks are compared to properly defined risk tolerance /acceptability criteria. Comparison of various risk…