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Concepts in Risk Assessment
Published in D. Kofi Asante-Duah, Hazardous Waste Risk Assessment, 2021
In performing risk assessment, scenarios are usually developed that will often reflect the worst possible exposure pattern; this notion of “worst-case scenario” in risk assessment refers to the event or series of events resulting in the greatest exposure or potential exposure. On the other hand, gross exaggeration of actual risks could lead to poor decisions being made with respect to limited resources available for general risk mitigation purposes. For instance, simply using upper-bound estimates based on compounded conservative assumptions may lead to the control of insignificant risks, depleting the limited resources. Thus, after establishing a worst-case scenario, it is often desirable to also develop and analyze more realistic or nominal scenarios, so that the level of risk posed by a hazardous situation can be better bounded by selecting “best” or “most likely” sets of assumptions for risk assessment. In deciding on the assumptions to be used in a risk assessment, it is imperative that the analyst chooses parameters that will, at worst, result in erring on the side of safety.
Seismic hazard assessment of the Shillong Plateau using a probabilistic approach
Published in Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, 2020
Olympa Baro, Abhishek Kumar, Alik Ismail-Zadeh
Consideration of the maximum possible earthquake magnitude at a fault leads to the worst-case scenario in seismic hazard quantification, and this might generate difficulties in decision making related to building construction/retrofitting and disaster risk management. Besides an economic component associated with construction/retrofitting costs, the determination of the maximum possible earthquake magnitude has significant uncertainties (e.g., Kijko 2004; Kijko and Singh 2011). There is no widely accepted procedure for the determination of the maximum earthquake magnitude in the region. But even though the maximum possible magnitude could be determined exactly, a recurrence time of events with this magnitude, or slightly below it, is unknown. It is because of a lack of observations on large earthquakes occurred on natural faults. Note that some attempts were made to estimate statistically the recurrence times of large earthquakes on individual faults (e.g., Zöller et al. 2007).