ABSTRACT

England and the Netherlands, with the need to determine premiums on annuities and the

probability that a ship sent on a trading voyage would return successfully (Hacking 1975;

Bernstein 1996). Most risk assessors are still involved in finance and insurance (Melnikov

2003). Risk assessment has since spread to many spheres of human endeavor including

engineering, wildfire management, medicine, and environmental regulation. The general

definition indicates that two features are common to all of these enterprises: a decision to

be made and uncertainty concerning outcomes.