ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contribute to the setting of best practice for business and public administrations to reduce the risks to acceptable social, economic and environmental levels. It illustrates that the probabilistic risk characterisation method appears to be a promising approach for business and public administrations for balancing project costs and risks, allocating risks to an acceptable social, economic and environmental level. However, the risk analysis is basically a mathematical tool and can only be of practical use if predictive models are available and quantitative estimates of the probability distribution of the sensitive input parameters and variables can be made. A case study limited to the quantitative risk assessment of nitrite and nitrate in drinking water supply will be shown to illustrate the benefits enjoyed with the proposed method. However, a lot of useful information, especially concerning the uncertainty or conservatism of the assumptions, would then have been lost.
