PMID- 16298053
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20060816
LR  - 20060306
IS  - 0304-3894 (Print)
IS  - 0304-3894 (Linking)
VI  - 130
IP  - 1-2
DP  - 2006 Mar 17
TI  - Managing industrial risk--having a tested and proven system to prevent and assess 
      risk.
PG  - 58-63
AB  - Some relatively easy techniques exist to improve the risk picture/profile to aid 
      in preventing losses. Today with the advent of computer system resources, 
      focusing on specific aspects of risk through systematic scoring and comparison, 
      the risk analysis can be relatively easy to achieve. Techniques like these 
      demonstrate how working experience and common sense can be combined 
      mathematically into a flexible risk management tool or risk model for analyzing 
      risk. The risk assessment methodology provided by companies today is no longer 
      the ideas and practices of one group or even one company. It is reflective of the 
      practice of many companies, as well as the ideas and expertise of academia and 
      government regulators. The use of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) 
      techniques for making critical decisions has been recognized for many years for a 
      variety of purposes. In today's computer age, the easy accessing and 
      user-friendly nature for using these techniques, makes them a favorable choice 
      for use in the risk assessment environment. The new user of these methodologies 
      should find many ideas directly applicable to his or her needs when approaching 
      risk decision making. The user should find their ideas readily adapted, with 
      slight modification, to accurately reflect a specific situation using MCDM 
      techniques. This makes them an attractive feature for use in assessment and risk 
      modeling. The main advantage of decision making techniques, such as MCDM, is that 
      in the early stages of a risk assessment, accurate data on industrial risk, and 
      failures are lacking. In most cases, it is still insufficient to perform a 
      thorough risk assessment using purely statistical concepts. The practical 
      advantages towards deviating from strict data-driven protocol seem to outweigh 
      the drawbacks. Industry failure data often comes at a high cost when a loss 
      occurs. We can benefit from this unfortunate acquisition of data through the 
      continuous refining of our decisions by incorporating this new information into 
      our assessments. MCDM techniques offer flexibility in accessing comparison within 
      broad data sets to reflect our best estimation of their importance towards 
      contribution to the risk picture. This allows for the accurate determination of 
      the more probable and more consequential issues. This can later be refined using 
      more intensive risk techniques and the avoidance of less critical issues.
FAU - Heller, Stephen
AU  - Heller S
AD  - Stephen Heller & Associates, Houston, TX 77084, USA. sheller@houston.rr.com
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
DEP - 20051117
PL  - Netherlands
TA  - J Hazard Mater
JT  - Journal of hazardous materials
JID - 9422688
SB  - IM
MH  - Decision Making, Organizational
MH  - *Industry
MH  - Risk Assessment/*methods
EDAT- 2005/11/22 09:00
MHDA- 2006/08/17 09:00
CRDT- 2005/11/22 09:00
PHST- 2005/11/22 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2006/08/17 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2005/11/22 09:00 [entrez]
AID - S0304-3894(05)00428-0 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2005.07.067 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - J Hazard Mater. 2006 Mar 17;130(1-2):58-63. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2005.07.067. 
      Epub 2005 Nov 17.