According to a model for homeland security risk analysis that is currently under consideration for use in supporting resource allocation decisions, the formula for the risk associated with a specified scenario is as follows:
Risk = C * L(S|A) * L(A) (Equation 1)
where L(A) is the likelihood of an attack being attempted, L(S|A) is the likelihood of adversary success given attack, C is the consequences following a successful attack, and the total risk is obtained by summing the results of Equation 1 for all relevant scenarios. At first glance, it would appear to the casual reader that this model is simply an implementation of risk measured in terms of expected loss, with the exception of the non-standard representation of L(.) for expressing the probability of the event contained within the parenthesis… Click to Continue Reading...
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Tags: methodologies · risk analysis · worst reasonable consequence
To follow up on my previous post regarding the work of Peter Sandman, I can’t help but advertise his short, yet important article entitled “Risk Words You Can’t Use” published in the August 2005 issue of The Synergist. While this article is a quick read, I will distill it down further and caveat some with my personal experience:
- Conservative: To risk people, conservative means an overestimate of risk. To laypeople, a “conservative” estimate is a low estimate. So whereas a risk person would use conservative to overstate the risk, a layperson (or perhaps decision maker) may interpret the message to be an understatement of risk, and thereby think that the risk could be much worse. Now, engineers and scientists understand what is meant by the
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Tags: Peter Sandman · language · risk analysis · risk communication · risk perception · words of risk
