Risks and Consequences

The goal of risk analysts is to help determine which consequences are important enough to consider in risk assessments and to analyze realistically and appropriately. This chapter considers all the credible consequences when performing the risk assessment. Human actions, of course, range from drinking a glass of pure water that has very positive consequences to launching a nuclear war that has very detrimental consequences. The company or stakeholders and risk analysts need to bound the risk assessment by the consequences of interest. In a meeting in 1990, a group of new engineers had a roundtable discussion about the possible risks to a research reactor in the middle of a desert and the possible consequences. The consequences of events like in Chernobyl and even the Lockerbie bombing are felt quite strongly today, over twenty years since either event occurred.