Calculating Risks

Abstract

This article highlights how risk analysis calculates the probability and consequences of failures so that appropriate action can be taken to forestall them. Factories judge the best maintenance intervals for machinery, and military planners rate the soundness of missions. A broad group of experts from industry, government, and academia are trying to adapt risk analysis methods to problems of protecting the nation's infrastructure from acts of terrorism. The program, dubbed RAMCAP (from "risk analysis and management for critical assets protection"), is intended to give the federal government a means of evaluating risk across the country. Having a means of judging relative risk can help the government decide where to spend federal money for public defense or where to concentrate the expertise of the national laboratories as they develop technology to protect the country's infrastructure. There are a lot of other people-risk analysis engineers, security consultants, and safety experts-stepping back.