System-focused risk identification and assessment for disaster preparedness: Dynamic threat analysis

Abstract

Current approaches to risk management stress the need for dynamic (i.e. continuous, ongoing) approaches to risk identification as part of a planned resource application aimed at reducing the expected consequences of undesired outcomes for the object of the assessment. We contend that these approaches place insufficient emphasis on the system knowledge available to the assessor, particularly in respect of three factors, namely the dynamic behavior of the system under threat, the role of human agents and the knowledge availability to those agents. In this paper we address the first of these shortcomings, namely the mobilization of explicit system knowledge in the identification of risks. We present a procedure for mobilizing quantitative and qualitative dynamic system knowledge using the case of flood threat to an electricity substation as a worked example. We assert that the approach described offers the potential of improving risk cognition by mobilizing system knowledge.