Impact of Simplifications in Risk Assessment and Decision-Making Process

Author(s):  
Ana Paula Araujo Costa ◽  
Denis Jose Schiozer
Author(s):  
Tatiana Kataeva ◽  
◽  

The article describes the model of a complex organizational management system where the several approaches are simultaneously implementing: functional, process and design. The relevance of applying integrated assessment mechanisms to management tasks in organizational systems, in particular, to solving the problems of coordinated decision-making, is substantiated. The reasons for the inconsistency of interests in the decision-making process are described. Examples of management tasks in organizational systems are given. The example of solving the problem of selecting projects into a portfolio using the integrated assessment mechanism is considered in detail. A set of evaluation criteria is given and convolution matrices are described. The development plan for the project assessment mechanism including risk assessment, taking into account the rank of expert is proposed.


Author(s):  
S. M. Orel ◽  
O. V. Ivashchenko

Military activities resulting in chemical pollution of the environment could produce a long-term impact on human health, whereas under certain conditions even ultra-low concentrations of some substances might provoke cancer, without noticeable toxic effect. According to modern views on carcinogenesis, the effect of carcinogens on human health does not have a threshold level of concentration. With the current deplorable state of the environment and an urgent need to improve it in view, we argue that there is a critical need for the mechanism that could assess the real state of the environment and would be instrumental for optimal decision-making process aimed at reducing environmental costs. The paper reports a case-study and exemplifies that a stepped health risk assessment is appropriate and helpful in case of environmental pollution following military actions. It also highlights the results of the risk assessment for life of the population living in the vicinity of hostilities. The results of the possible risk calculations concerning the damage non-carcinogenic and carcinogenic compounds could cause to the people living in the vicinity of hostilities were obtained in stages; the simple Monte Carlo error propagation methods and the two-dimensional Monte Carlo procedure were used to estimate the probability of different outcomes due to the intervention of random variables. It is shown that, in comparison with the simple Monte Carlo error propagation methods, the two-dimensional Monte Carlo procedure for estimating the probability of different outcomes provides additional information for the decision-making process, concerning either taking some specific measures or not. The findings of the study are the following: the assessment and subsequent analysis of environmental risk provide much more relevant information for taking an environmental decision, as compared to the threshold concentration methodology. The risk assessment should be carried out in stages, starting from simple (deterministic) to more complex ones (first the simple Monte Carlo error propagation methods, and later, two-dimensional Monte Carlo method), whenever there arise any of the following needs: if it is necessary to establish priorities among the areas, polluters, pollutants, pollutant transfer routes, categories of population and other risk factors; if resources for environmental conservation are limited; if mistaken decisions could generate destructive results; if there is a lack of information necessary to take a competent decision.


Author(s):  
Xue Bai ◽  
Kai Song ◽  
Jian Liu ◽  
Adam Khalifa Mohamed ◽  
Chenya Mou ◽  
...  

To provide theoretical support for the protection of dispersed drinking water sources of groundwater, we need to accurately evaluate the time and scope of groundwater pollution hazards to human health. This helps the decision-making process for remediation of polluted soil and groundwater in service stations. In this study, we conducted such an evaluation by coupling numerical modeling with a health risk assessment. During the research, soil and groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for 20 pollutants. Fifty-six percent of the heavy contaminants and 100% of the organic contaminants exhibited maximum values at the location of the oil depot. Gray correlation analysis showed that the correlation between background samples and soil underlying the depot was 0.375–0.567 (barely significant to insignificant). The correlation between the reference sequence of other points was 0.950–0.990 (excellent correlation). The correlation of environmental impact after oil depot leakage followed the order: organic pollutants > heavy metals > inorganic pollutants. The groundwater simulation status and predictions indicated that non-carcinogenic health risks covered 25,462 m2 at the time of investigation, and were predicted to extend to 29,593 m2 after five years and to 39,873 m2 after 10 years. Carcinogenic health risks covered 21,390 m2 at the time of investigation, and were predicted to extend to 40,093 m2 after five years and to 53,488 m2 after 10 years. This study provides theoretical support for the protection of a dispersed drinking water source such as groundwater, and also helps the decision-making process for groundwater and soil environment improvement.


1997 ◽  
Vol 170 (S32) ◽  
pp. 35-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Harris

Risk assessment has always been an essential part of all medical practice, and doctors have always been trained to make rapid assessment of risk. Much of the early training of doctors in both medicine and surgery centres on risk assessment. However, the method of acquiring that knowledge is predominantly through the apprenticeship model with observation by the trainee of the trainer's decision-making process. Those decisions, however, are often skewed and biased by a whole variety of influences, rather than always being based on scientific evidence. Clearly the increasing influence of evidence-based medicine will help this. At one extreme, however, there are heroic surgeons taking unnecessary risk or taking on cases which might more appropriately have been left without treatment, and at the other extreme, consultants who may feel demoralised or depressed might well become nihilistic about medicine and therefore might not attempt to treat cases that are treatable.


Author(s):  
Sue McLaughlin ◽  
Gwen Bonner ◽  
Caroline Attard

Assessment and management of suicide risk within the inpatient setting can be particularly challenging for staff where a range of factors impact the decision-making process. Using an authentic, compassionate approach towards understanding risks with service users is important to support meaningful collaborative risk assessment, and involving carers wherever possible is recommended. Reflective peer review can be a helpful way to consider decision-making and enhance clinical skills, as well as providing valuable support to staff. Post-incident support can be equally important for staff and service users and the culture in which risk assessment is undertaken needs to be one of encouragement and positive learning across the team and the organization.


1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 539-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Rodricks

FDA's efforts during the early 1970s to establish acceptable food exposure levels for carcinogenic animal drugs such as diethylstilbestrol (DES) led the agency to incorporate quantitative risk assessment into its decision-making process. During the nearly two decades since FDA first introduced risk assessment as a regulatory tool, its uses have been expanded to almost all areas of chemical regulation. The major driving forces behind this expansion have been (1) the need to deal systematically with the large number of commercially important chemicals that have been identified as animal carcinogens and that have been found to occur widely in the environment and (2) the large number of laws that now require regulatory agencies to establish limits on human exposure to these substances.


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