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NE 275 - PRINCIPLES AND METHODS OF RISK ANALYSIS, FALL 2007
W. E. KASTENBERG & T. E. McKone

1. Course Grading and Requirements

I anticipate that grading for the course will be based on:

a. A midterm exam worth 30%
b. A term project worth 50%.
c. A 15-minute presentation at the end of the semester during the Final Exam Period, and worth 20%.

Dr. McKone and I will assign some homework and a considerable amount of reading; the latter to provide a basis for both the lectures and your term project, which will be the focal point of your outside work. We will not cover all the material in the readings during the lectures; we hope the readings help you with the class project and beyond, particularly if you utilize risk analysis in your future work.

The project will culminate in an oral presentation during final exams week, and your submittal of three papers (described below). The term projects should be handed in no later than Wednesday, December 12, 2007.

2. Exams

The midterm will be a take-home exam. The midterm exam will be handed out on October 8, and will be due October 17, 2007.

3. Course Materials

A course reader will be available for purchase at the Copy Center on Euclid. The reader contains some seminal papers in the field, as well as some unpublished notes. Other course materials will be posted on b Space.

4. The Term Project

The term project will consist of three parts: risk assessment, risk management and institutional issues, as follows.

• Risk Assessment.
This should be your first task and should involve a problem of your own choosing. Your problem can focus on a safety issue, on an environmental issue, on an ecological issue, on a severe natural hazard issue or on a national security issue. You can use your M.S. or Ph.D. research project (if you have one) as a basis for the problem chosen. The objective is to quantify the risks associated with the problem chosen. A "Draft for Comment" of your risk assessment report will be due October 29, 2007 . The risk assessment should be no more than 10 pages long. All data, figures and tables should be in the Appendix (in addition to the 10 pages of text).

The risk assessment should contain:

  1. A Title page.
  2. An Executive Summary (1 page).
  3. A Table of Contents (section I).
  4. An Introduction (presenting the problem)
  5. A section on the Methodology, Models or Framework used (Section II).
  6. A section on the Data, where obtained and where made-up! (Section III).
  7. A section on the Results (Section IV).
  8. Conclusions and/or Recommendations (Section V).
  9. References.
  10. An Appendix (or Appendices) containing data, figures, tables, etc.

Of particular importance to me is a discussion of the risk measures used, your assumptions (for all aspects of the project, e.g. data, methods, models etc.) and your interpretation of the results. Your Draft for Comment will be returned to you (hopefully), well before the final report is due, so you can correct any problem.

• Risk Management.
This is your second task and should follow from the risk assessment. The risk management exercise can take several forms such as meeting regulatory requirements, reducing risk, improving product design, assuring public acceptability (or public rejection, as the case may be!), or reducing liability. The objective here is to determine whether or not the risks quantified in the risk assessment are acceptable or should be reduced, and if so how. A "Draft for Comment" of this part of the term project will be due December 5, 2007 and will be returned before the final report is due.

This draft should be about the same length as the risk assessment (no longer than 10 pages of text) with all figures, tables and data in the Appendix. The format should be the same as the risk assessment with the addition of a set of recommendations (backed up by analysis) regarding how the risks should be managed.

• Institutional Issues.
This is your third and last task. It can address such things as risk perception, risk communication, regulatory issues, social issues, political issues, economic issues, etc. This should be included in your "Final Draft" and should be on the order of 5 pages or less in length.

5. Final Report.

The final integrated report is due by 5:00 pm. Wednesday, December 12, 2007. It should contain a single Executive Summary (one page); and a single table of contents.