Discuss about the Rational Quantitative Optimal Approach.
The problem in relation to risk is public which almost all individuals needs to the deal with within the society is that of risk and the situation is the same from a very long time and is expected to continue. In the article, the author had extracted information from historical records and explored implications of such information on future and current risk management process. It has been provided by the article that uncertainty of outcome, toxicity of substances, and violence from an event or anything like that do not constitute socially relevant risks. Instead, the inability of individuals, which is of a perceived nature, leads to socially relevant risks. To the contradiction of this statement is has been provided by Clarke (2018) that there are few situations which an individuals may be subjected to during lifetime which they would not be able to handle irrespective of their expertise as an individual cannot be expected to be an expert in all areas and risk can arise from any sector.
Risk encompasses inappropriately structured messes, problems and to pretend that a better understanding about the nature of risks would assist in averting or dealing with such risks, is completely destructive. This is because such understanding lacks certainty and comprehensiveness, which implies that it is important to improve the capability to cope better, which is essentially an issue, related to management. Therefore, in the opinion of Clarke (2018), it is crucial to assess and structure the incomplete and contradicting knowledge to enable to select management actions based on understanding of the present knowledge, its implications as well as its limitations. In order to achieve the same, policy analysis can be said to be more important than science.
Here, Clarke attempts to apply three basic concepts through three stories that explain such concepts. Firstly, he explains the concept of ‘feasibility’ within the scope of risk management. Secondly, the author concentrates on the design of resilient or what is referred to as the ‘soft fail’ coping strategies. This explains that efficiency or optimality is not crucial but exhibition of strength against the unknown upon which the actual coping performance is dependent. Thirdly, the fundamental outcome that may result from the analysis and experience is the ability to manage the unknown depending on the flexibility of their individuals and institutions as well as on the capability to experiment with the alternative forms of adaptation to the risks that is likely to threaten such individuals (Clarke 2018).
As per the first story, the author has emphasized on the concept that people and their fear is at the center of all the problems related to the risk problem. The fear of injury, fear of loss and the fear of unknown forms the basis of the theories that the author has illustrated through the stories. The procedure to overcome those fears has a direct impact on the spiritual character, well-being of the individuals as well as on the society that it forms.
In order to illustrate how the fear of injury, fear of the unknown and the fear of loss has a direct impact on the spiritual character and the society, the author has illustrated the implication of societal risks assessment. Earlier, in the absence of any certain and explicable reason for dying of sheep, rotting of fields, human diseases, witches and witchcrafts were encompassed the concept of societal risk assessment. During that time, the institutionalize expertise were residing within the Church and such experts considered ‘witchcrafts’ as the reason for such unknown events without even seeking any source of evils or acknowledging with their own ignorance and limitations.
For centuries, people considered ‘witches’ as a convenient label for their fear for the unknown and used it as an adequate explanation for any misfortunes. Even in the contemporary year, there is a lack of any efficient empirical observation that would lead to ‘no’ for an answer while investigation is made asking questions like ‘Is this a risk’. During the early period, the church would ask ‘Are you a witch’ and if the answer was no, even then the person was subjected to torture. The same procedure exists even today and there is no tool that would provide logical explanations to cease the investigations which otherwise ultimately lead to punishment even if the person is not guilty. Hence, the contemporary risks assessment means is also incompetent to address the ills of the human beings and neither is it based on the rational-scientific foundations.
Further, in the next segment, the author has strived to explain the basic nature of risk that can be inferred from the attempts to deal with environmental resources. Clarke (2018) asserts that, here, the author has attempted to represent the twofold characteristics of ‘risk’ that is evident from the example that a river which supplies water for irrigational purposes, can also cause floods. Similarly, the plants and animals that co-habit with us on earth provides us with foods, labor etc and at the same time, they may cause diseases or may disappear significantly due to the rise in demand for them.
In earlier times, diseases like polio were a threat to children and adults as well with fatal or violent results. However, with the introduction of polio vaccines, it has become a threat of the past due to the vaccination campaigns and public health regimes However, Clarke (2018) argues that with the decline in the frequency of disease, there has been an incline in the other sort of risks. The concept of genetic variation has given rise to the resource and risk management concerns that is characterized with the element of uncertainty. One genetic type may be adapted to one type of environmental conditions and the other to some other form of environmental conditions. This implies that uncertainty in the natural system has been perceived as a source of risk, which was assumed, that if removed, it would result in reduction in risk and would result in betterment of the resource system performance.
In the field of management, managerial efforts had changed the types of risks that it faces but it does not change the risk factor. It is important to design resource management schemes that overcome the failures results from the inherent uncertainty and ignorance within the resource systems. Furthermore, the risk assessment profession can be explained effectively in the context of drug development. For instance, medicines are provided to reduce the specific medical problems but the medicines themselves are likely to give rise to risks but of a specific type. This is because the risk is only confined to those who uses the medicines and risk is undertaken under the close consultation of a medically professional who is trained to balance personal benefits under specific circumstances.
The personal attribute can be referred to construe how individuals respond to the unknown by trying to move back from it or trying to control or understand it. In reference to the myth of the Lady or the Tiger, the first man lived safe and died chaste whereas the second man hired risk assessment consultants to evaluate the risks. The third man undertook a tiger training course and was eaten by the lady. The approach adopted by the first man was based on the concept of a ‘risk-free’ life that he could never lead. The approach adopted by the second man demonstrated hope of undertaking synoptic risk assessment which included safely measurement of requisite probabilities and trade-offs as well as evaluating the social risk-benefit function. The third approach that was adopted by the third man reflected the tradition of professional engineering. However, Clarke (2018) states that these traditions have one common characteristics that is, the three men aimed at opposing to the unknown and tried to overcome it with the hope that the situation would be less frightening. The analysis conducted by the three men establishes the fact that the ignorance of the individuals shall always be greater than the knowledge of such individuals.
Nevertheless, none of the approaches demonstrates an effective coping with the unknown. An alternative tradition of coping exists, which although is not used in the contemporary era, but has been a practical and effective approach in the ancient era. This alternative tradition includes acceptance of the fact that incomplete knowledge is inevitable and instead of controlling the unknown, it is important to accommodate the unknown, thus, purporting to co-exist with the unknown. Therefore, it is high time when policy analysis that concentrates on design of alternative institutional structures must be designed that will organize public will within the risk-taking enterprise and shall improve the capability to cope with the unknown.
In the present scenario, it can be observed that a large number of people were affected as a result of this hazardous flood which in the process took many lives. As a result of such flood there has been losses in stock, damages to property and businesses. In this regard, there has been loss of intangible costs which created unfavorable effect on the health sector. In this regard, it is noteworthy to mention here that from the very beginning, the concept relating to public concern in relation to the factors opposed to risky technologies has been implemented for the purpose of increasing awareness among people about risk education. However, in recent era it can be observed that the perceptions in relation to risk have been creating a number of implications on such efforts regarding educational awareness. For the purpose of broadening the perception of the individuals towards the estimation of quantitative risk analysis, the index of death or disability, exposure towards risk per hour, probability of death annually and reduction in life expectancy rates were taken into consideration. The perspectives of individuals and their attitudes in some cases do not provide significant results in analyzing risk perceptions. This is due to the reason that in general, individuals are more concerned about the expected fatalities coming in their way rather than expected risk. Individuals may not possess adequate knowledge regarding health hazards arising out of disasters. However, in most of the cases, their basic knowledge regarding the concept of risk id more appropriate from those of the experts evaluating risk assessments.
In this scenario, it can be observed that the Australian Government for the purpose of eliminating the risk arising out of the natural disaster of flood has implemented various regional, urban and developmental planning standards. However, the government of Queensland has initiated the implementation of various local government planning schemes and by-laws. in this regard, it is worth stating that the State Territory Governments in Australia played significant role in coordinating disaster management programs. In this context, it is worth mentioning that the Commonwealth Government has been providing active assistance through the implementation of Commonwealth Government Disaster Response Plan and the Emergency Management of Australia. It has been observed that these programs proved to be beneficial in providing operational and financial assistance by collecting appropriate response from the general public. In this way, these programs have provided active support to the recovery plan for the purpose of reducing hazards of floods.
In this regard, the activities of the management towards the prevention of flood hazards can be emphasized. It can be rightly commented that the management was efficient in their part to implement appropriate programs and take measurable steps for the purpose of ensuring prevention of floods in the future.
This section of the report will discuss the overview of the basic topics related to the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1970. The OSHA had been created in the United States by President Richard Nixon in the year 1970 in compliance with the United States Congress. The OSHA acts as the public agency enforcing the rules related to workplace health and safety. The basic purpose of OSHA is to implement the proposition that no worker should be exposed to health hazards in the workplace during the course of their employment. It can be stated that after OSHA had been formed the remarkable progress in mitigating workplace hazards. After the OSHA came into effect the workplace injuries, deaths and illnesses have significantly reduced. OSHA aims to protect workers, who are exposed to high-risk jobs and those who work with toxic chemicals by educating workers about the job hazards and by providing the employers with assistance of strict compliance with the health and safety standards so as to mitigate any possible chances of health hazards. It can be mentioned that under the OSHA law, the employers are responsible for providing a safe working environment to the workers which is free from any health risk. The Occupational Safety and Health Act applies to most of the employees and employers of the private sector companies. The aforementioned act covers public sector employees and employers in fifty states and certain other jurisdictions in the United States of America. The aforementioned act is implemented by the federal authority. The OSHA encourages the states to develop their own programs of health and safety. It can be mentioned that the OSHA is in charge of approving the health and safety programs that are develop by the states and also in charge of providing half the funding for the development and implementation of each of such programs. Thee protection offered by OSHA is applicable to all federal agencies. According article 19 of the OSHA, it can be stated that the heads of the federal agencies are required to provide healthy and safe working environment to the employees. The OSHA conducts investigations and inspections to check whether the federal agencies are complying with their health and safety standards. However, the OSHA does not have the authority to impose penalties on the federal agencies if such agencies breach their duties of complying with their regulations of the OSHA.
Further in accordance with the health and safety regulations of New Zealand it can be stated that employers conducting business or undertaking PCBU are required to ensure that they take reasonably practical steps to ensure the health and safety f the workers. Risks that are likely to arise from the course of work are required to be eliminated as long as such steps taken by the employers are reasonably practical.
Whether the steps taken are reasonably practical can be assessed by the two stage test. Firstly the employers must consider the likelihood of the harm and how severe the consequences of the harm are to the stakeholders.
The cost involved to implement the preventive measure. It has to be assessed whether the cost involved in the mitigation of the risk is proportionate to the risk involved.
In November 2015 nineteen people were killed in Brazil due to the collapse of a dam. The waste water dam at the Samarco iron ore mine had collapsed. The iron mine had been owned by BHP and Vale. The consequences of the collapse of the dam were very severe; villages were swept away, many people had become homeless and the rivers had become polluted. The collapse of the mine is considered to be the greatest environmental disaster in the history of Brazil. The companies BHP and Vale had agreed last year to pay a sum of 2.9 billion U.S dollars over a period of six years for the restorative work of Samarco and as compensation. It was later revealed that the collapse of the dam was responsible for a wide range of construction and design flaws of the dam. Three Brazilian companies had been sued by the law enforcement authorities of Brazil to pay a compensation of 64 billion U.S. dollars.
Therefore in this case it can be assessed that the collapse of the dam occurred due to the negligent actions of the builders of the same. The essential elements of Negligence that can be applied to assess whether party was negligent in his actions was first established in the case Donoghue V Stevenson. For the plaintiff to prove that the defendant was negligent he must establish the following facts:
The defendant had a duty of care to the plaintiff. Whether the defendant had a duty of care is assessed by the application of the Caparo test as first illustrated in the case Caparo Industries pIc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605. This is a three stage test which aims to identify:
The element in proving negligence is breach of duty of care by the defendant. An objective test is applied to assess whether any reasonable person acting the position of the defendant would have taken additional care to avoid the damages sustained by the plaintiff. This was established in the case Vaughan v Menlove (1837) 3 Bing. N.C. 467
Third important element is causation of the damage sustained by the defendant. The ‘BUT FOR’ test as illustrated in the case Barnett v Chelsea & Kensington Hospital [1969] 1 QB 428 is applied to assess whether the plaintiff would have sustained the damages regardless of the negligent actions of the defendant.
The fourth element is remoteness of damage. To assess whether the damage sustained by the plaintiff was remote or not, wagon mound test as established in The Wagon Mound no 1 [1961] AC 388 case is applied.
Thus in this case it is clearly evident that the builders of the dam had duty of care to the public in general. They breached such duty as any reasonable person action in the position of the builder would have taken additional steps to ensure safety of the public. The dam would not have collapsed without the negligent and faulty designing of the dam. The damage was not too remote. Thus it can be established that actions of the builders of the dam were negligent. Therefore they could be sued for claiming damages.
From the very beginning, dam safety programs have been designed in such a way for the purpose of ensuring safety standards in technical matters (Knight 2017). However, it is important on the part of the senior managers to acquire proper justification for the purpose of investing into improvements regarding dam safety (Baecher 2016).In this regard, it is important on the part of the dam safety managers to involve themselves towards a dam safety regulatory environment (Vick 2017). The dam safety regulatory environment may vary from hard regulator to soft regulators. Hard regulators are less flexible as compared to soft regulators and therefore, the soft regulators proved to be beneficial in determining the extent of remedial performances (Morales-Torres et al. 2016). However, the senior managers will be able to assess the perception of duality if there is an existence of both traditional practice and risk-based criteria. For the purpose of detecting the extent of risk-reduction, various legal implications need to be included by the senior managers (Jozi, Shoshtary and Zadeh 2015). In this context, the senior managers are required to involve the legal implications of duty of care and due diligence.
For the purpose of better understanding and improving the condition of the dams, it is important to involve expenditure of funds. Therefore, economic and financial indicators involving benefit and cost ratio, net present value and internal rate of return may prove to be effective remedial measures (Cloete, Retief and Viljoen 2016). However, the presence of a dam may create unfavorable risk to the general public as a whole. In this regard, it is worthwhile to refer here that, the projects involving dam safety remedial works may perform poorly in case of areas involving corporate risk management. Therefore, it is important on the part of the senior managers to recognize the presence of high-level budget commitment in order to allocate funds for ensuring risk reduction in cases involving dam safety (Jozi, Shoshtary and Zadeh 2015). However, there must be active struggle on the part of the senior managers for the purpose of evaluating the amount of funding required to ensure dam safety risk reduction and for the purpose of ensuring proper investment in case of other business activities. In most of the cases quantitative financial risk criteria are sometimes applied by the senior managers. However, for this purpose, the senior managers shall require active assistance from the insurers in order to determine their effects on the terms and conditions of the alternative dam safety risk-reduction strategies.
It can be stated that decisions in relation to remedial work related to dam safety should be efficiently informed by the standards of engineering practice, criteria involving risk-based practices and the considerations put forward by other stakeholders. However, the above mentioned categories are generally unreliable. Therefore, the approaches involving inputs of risk assessment by combining with other categories involving decision inputs and engineering standards can be efficiently applied for the purpose of ensuring improvements in dam safety.
References:
Barnett v Chelsea & Kensington Hospital [1969] 1 QB 428
Caparo Industries pIc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605
Donoghue v Stevenson [1932] AC 562
The Wagon Mound no 1 [1961] AC 388 case
Vaughan v Menlove (1837) 3 Bing. N.C. 467
Baecher, G.B., 2016. Uncertainty in dam safety risk analysis. Georisk: Assessment and Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards, 10(2), pp.92-108.
Clarke, W. (2018). Witches, Floods and Wonder Drugs: Historical Perspectives on Risk Management. pp.287-313.
Cloete, G.C., Retief, J.V. and Viljoen, C., 2016. A rational quantitative optimal approach to dam safety risk reduction. Civil engineering and environmental systems, 33(2), pp.85-105.
Jozi, S.A., Shoshtary, M.T. and Zadeh, A.R.K., 2015. Environmental risk assessment of dams in construction phase using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 21(1), pp.1-16.
Knight, K.A., 2017. Twenty Years of Dam Safety Risk Analysis and Risk Management Practice at the Bureau of Reclamation. In Geo-Risk 2017 (pp. 234-242).
Morales-Torres, A., Serrano-Lombillo, A., Escuder-Bueno, I. and Altarejos-García, L., 2016. The suitability of risk reduction indicators to inform dam safety management. Structure and Infrastructure Engineering, 12(11), pp.1465-1476.
Vick, S.G., 2017. Dam Safety Risk—From Deviance to Diligence. In Geo-Risk 2017 (pp. 19-30).
Osha.gov. (2018). Home | Occupational Safety and Health Administration. [online] Available at: https://www.osha.gov/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].
Zealand, W. (2018). Home. [online] WorkSafe. Available at: https://worksafe.govt.nz/ [Accessed 23 Apr. 2018].
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