ABSTRACT
The philosophy of risk analysis finds its origin in the nuclear, aeronautic and chemical process sectors, where great hazards and financial losses are incurred as a result of the occurrence of unwanted events. Since the 1980s, literature on the subject of risk has grown rapidly. The word ‘risk’ is used and interpreted in many ways. In 1997, Stan Kaplan1 in his address to the Society for Risk Analysis recalls how a committee established by this society laboured for four years to define the word risk and then gave up. The committee concluded it would be better to let each author define it in his own way explaining clearly what way that is.
