ABSTRACT
The fundamental reason for performing risk assessment is that it is useful for making decisions in the face of uncertainty about the future. Risk assessment benefits someone who needs to make decisions to meet an organization’s or project’s objectives. Few schools teach probabilistic risk assessment (PRA), and it is not a discipline normally associated with engineering and management. The ability to communicate methods, results, and benefits of risk assessment is even further removed from the normal education and experience of an engineer. As a group, decisionmakers (DMs) are often uninformed about risk assessment methods and benefits. It is up to the risk analysts to make the case for the usefulness of risk analyses on a project. The ability to clearly communicate risk issues, methods, and results with a high degree of credibility and in a way that is obviously targeted toward the overall success of the project becomes at least as important as the analysis itself.
