Keynote address to OpRisk Europe Conference, 21 March, London: All risk is subjective. Risk is a word that refers to the future, and that exists only in the imagination. Risk management involves speculating about this future, about things that could go wrong, and about ways of preventing them. In recent years, in the public sector …
Category: risk
Jan 18
Complexity & Uncertainty in a Risk Averse Society
Summary of presentation to Omega Centre Conference on Planning and decision-making amidst complexity, risk and uncertainty, Royal Institute of British Architects, London, 22 January 2007. The Omega Centre project aims to contribute to the advancement of the art and science of planning, appraising and evaluating the impacts of mega land-based transport projects in major urban …
Dec 16
Britain’s seat belt law should be repealed
The BBCs Today Programme is running a competition called Christmas Repeal in which listeners are invited to nominate an existing law that should be repealed. I nominate Britains seat belt law. [Update 23 December. Despite my high hopes and much encouragement, my Immodest Proposal did not succeed. It did not pass through the Today Programmes …
Oct 29
Prudence goes off-shore
Following an email encounter with someone involved with risk management in the Norwegian off-shore oil and gas industry, I have put on my website a paper, Prudence and the Gambler, published in 1991 by Shell World a Shell Oil company publication. My article was followed, in the same issue, by a First Reaction from Koos …
Oct 09
HSE sick and tired – and likely to remain so
On 22 August 2006 Bill Callaghan, Chair of Britains Health and Safety Commission (HSC overseer of the HSE, the Health and Safety Executive) issued a press release entitled: Get a life, says HSC. He announced: Im sick and tired of hearing that ˜health and safety is stopping people doing worthwhile and enjoyable things when at …
Sep 11
Dangerous Trees?
Paper for conference on The Future of Tree Risk Management London, 15 September 2006. The average annual number of tree-related deaths between 1998 and 2003 (the most recent statistics available) was six, or one in 10 million averaged over the national population. The Health and Safety Executive considers that an individual risk of death of …
Sep 02
Three framing devices for managing risk
Summary of presentation for CRIMS (Canadian Risk and Insurance Management Society) conference, Calgary, 17-20 September 2006. It is important to be clear about the type of risk you are dealing with. Directly perceptible risks are dealt with instinctively and intuitively. Virtual risks are culturally constructed when the science is inconclusive people are liberated to argue …
Aug 06
Death on the roads – Article lacks logic
Letter to the editor of the British Medical Journal, 26 June, 2006, commenting on Unsafe driving behaviour and four wheel drive vehicles: observational study, by Lesley Walker, Jonathan Williams and Konrad Jamrozik. EDITOR Walker et al show convincingly that drivers and other occupants of heavy four wheel drive vehicles are safer in crashes than those …