Ranking the risks from multiple hazards in a small community.

Natural hazards, human-induced accidents, and malicious acts have caused great losses and disruptions to society. After September 11, 2001, critical infrastructure protection has become a national focus in the United States and is likely to remain one for the foreseeable future. Damage to the infrastructures and assets could be mitigated through predisaster planning and actions.

A screening methodology for the identification and ranking of infrastructure vulnerabilities due to terrorism.

The extreme importance of critical infrastructures to modern society is widely recognized. These infrastructures are complex and interdependent. Protecting the critical infrastructures from terrorism presents an enormous challenge.

Exploration of a bayesian updating methodology to monitor the safety of interventional cardiovascular procedures.

Appropriate methods for monitoring of the safety of medical devices introduced into clinical practice have been elusive to develop and implement. A novel approach is the application of Bayesian updating, which incorporates existing knowledge regarding event rates into the estimation of risk. This framework has been shown in other domains to be data efficient and to address some of the limitations of conventional statistical methods.

How useful is quantitative risk assessment?

This article discusses the use of quantitative risk assessment (QRA) in decision making regarding the safety of complex technological systems. The insights gained by QRA are compared with those from traditional safety methods and it is argued that the two approaches complement each other. It is argued that peer review is an essential part of the QRA process.