SPRING 2000

CEE 360/548: Risk Assessment and Management

Prof. E. VanMarcke

ASSIGNMENT #5

Prepare a short (3 pages maximum) proposal/outline for your final paper for the course. Projects may be done singly or in teams of (preferably not more than) two.

Plan on making a brief presentation in class (some time between April 10 and 19), with accompanying handout, reporting on web resources (data, in particular) related to your topic of choice.

FINAL PAPER -- GENERAL GUIDELINES

Formulate, analyze, and illustrate a decision situation involving risk.

Describe a specific decision situation for which you will seek to quantify probabilities and consequences (i.e., perform risk assessment) for different actions or strategies, one being the "reference action" ("status quo", "business as usual"), and illustrate the use of risk management methodology to arrive at a "best" action (for specified or chosen decision criteria). The decision involved may be "terminal" (design, regulation, operating rule, strategy) or "pre-terminal" (search, inspection, data acquisition) or a combination.

The final paper should have these three parts:

1. -- A section on web resources (annotated survey of sites, data sources) related to your topic, corresponding to the presentation in class.

2. -- A section in which you describe the "system" and the decision situation involved; identify and evaluate the hazards to which the system is subjected; propose one or more methods of risk assessment for the "reference action" (such as: event tree, fault tree, system reliability; "L and R" format, real-world or lab "experiments", simulation; subjective probability assessment; random processes or fields); and use available data to evaluate risks and consequences.

3. -- A section in which you do a quantitative "example" risk assessment for the "reference action" and illustrate the risk management methodology.