Energy Insurance Mutual Risk Managers’ Meeting Orlando 26 February 2008 [email protected] Risk...

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Energy Insurance Mutual Risk Managers’ Meeting Orlando 26 February 2008 www.John-Adams.co.uk [email protected] Risk Management: Making God Laugh

Transcript of Energy Insurance Mutual Risk Managers’ Meeting Orlando 26 February 2008 [email protected] Risk...

  • Energy Insurance MutualRisk Managers MeetingOrlando 26 February 2008

    [email protected] Management:Making God Laugh

  • 1980 The Society for Risk Analysis forms in Washington1986 The Institute for Risk Management begins in London1993 The title Chief Risk Officer is first used by James Lam, at GE Capital1996 The Global Association of Risk Professionals1996 Peter Bernsteins Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

    http://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/dept/irom/bba/risk/rmi/arnold/DOWNLOADS/Hist_of_RM_2002.pdf

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  • DrakeGilbertSaxtonDavisHakluytWrightHudsonBaffinHalleyDampierBruceCookRamsdenRoyMackenzieRennellVancouverParkClappertonBarrowLanderParryColbyBackRossBiscoeFranklinStuartEyreGaltonEverestHookerBatesBurtonSpekeMurchisonLivingstoneBakerKirkGodwin- AustenClarkeMarkhamYuleStanleyDoughtyThomsonMurrayCurzonScottShackletonKeltieGertrude BellHogarth

  • DrakeGilbertSaxtonDavisHakluytWrightHudsonBaffinHalleyDampierBruceCookRamsdenRoyMackenzieRennellVancouverParkClappertonBarrowLanderParryColbyBackRossBiscoeFranklinStuartEyreGaltonEverestHookerBatesBurtonSpekeMurchisonLivingstoneBakerKirkGodwin- AustenClarkeMarkhamYuleStanleyDoughtyThomsonMurrayCurzonScottShackletonKeltieGertrude BellHogarth

  • The death of Captain Cook

  • CAUTIONThese plants are coveredin sharp spikes that maypuncture the skin if touchedDO NOT HANDLEThe entrance to the Health and Safety Laboratory, Buxton

  • Different kinds of Riske.g. climbing a tree, riding a bike, driving, care.g. cholera: needa microscope tosee it and a scientific training tounderstandScientists dont know or cannotagree: e.g. BSE/vCJD, global warming, low-level radiation, pesticide residues, HRT, mobile phones,passive smoking,stock market . The legal environmentUnknown unknownsTerrorism

  • A successful risk managerRisk management isa balancing actinstinctiveintuitiveinfluenced by experiencemodified by culture

  • Perception of risksAccidentsPropensity totake risksBalancingbehaviourInjidents

    BMJ bans accidents2 June 2001

  • Perception of risksAccidentsPropensity totake risksBalancingbehaviourRewardsBottom loop biasReducing Risks - Protecting People

  • www.acm.ab.ca/safety/images/ fault-tree.gif

  • the presenthindsight

  • Culpable negligence

  • Culpable negligence

  • The swings are packed away at night because kids might climb the fence and use them unsupervised and hurt themselves.

    No children

  • Perception of risksAccidentsPropensity totake risksBalancingbehaviourRewardsTop loop biasNo pain, no gainNo risk, no reward

  • 'You get a bit carried away'

    Socit Gnrale's 'rogue trader' refuses to be held as 'scapegoat' for the French bank's $7.1billion loss.

    Jrme KervielBut many Calgary traders are willing to cut him slack. Hes a bright guy who got this call wrong, says one. He wont have much trouble getting another job. http://www.moneyweek.com/file/19829/brian-hunter-from-hero-to-zero-in-two-years.html

  • Examples of behavioural interventions by senior leaders to promote a safety culturepromoting workplace safety to signal a wider change

    When arriving at a meeting room, the most senior person checks the fire escapes are unlocked and unblocked and encourages colleagues to place bags out of the way The most senior person opens the meeting with a reminder of the safety procedures (e.g. any fire tests planned, congregation points, nearest phone, fire extinguisher and alarm points) Backup junior colleagues challenging more senior staff on these issues.

  • Some of the other interventions that are used to set a cultural tone for safety within the oil industry include:

    promoting safe stair walking techniques, such as holding the handrail providing lids for the safe carrying of coffee correcting colleagues tipping back on their chairs encouraging colleagues to refuse any form of road transport that does not provide seat belts regular safety tours, meetings and reviews led by senior staff.

  • U.S. Chemical Safety Board Chairman Carolyn W. Merritt

    "significant role of budget and production pressures in driving BP's decision-making - and ultimately harming safety."

    BP focused on personal safety statistics but allowed catastrophic process safety risks to grow."

    http://www.csb.gov/index.cfm?folder=news_releases&page=news&NEWS_ID=375

  • The truck driver and the cyclist

  • 69% of Americans believe in angels. 46% have their own guardian angel.

  • Inside the UK's fastest machine113m HECToR will help British researchers simulate everything from climate change to financial marketsJames Randerson, science correspondent, The Guardian, Wednesday January 2 2008 Professor Jacek Gondzio at the University of Edinburgh plans to use HECToR to model financial markets. He is working on finding the safest and most profitable investment strategies for pension funds 100 trillion calculations every second It measures up well internationally, sitting at 17 in the top500.org list of the most powerful computers in the world.The High-End Computing Terascale Resource, or HECToR

  • A virtual risk: vCJD from BSE?I have worked in this field for 25 years did I go out and eat lamb chops, did I go out and eat lamb brain, sheep brain? The answer was no, but it was not based on scientific criteria, it was based on just emotion. At a scientific level I cannot give you a scientific basis for choosing or not choosing beef, because we do not know the answers.Nobel Laureate Stanley PrusinerBSE Inquiry, 6 June 1998 (www.bse.org.uk)

  • A typology of perceptual filters

  • Chlorpromazine LithiumProzacAlcohol?

  • The legislatorsPurveyors of guidanceEnforcersCompliance managersSingle issue campaignersLawyersInsurersMedia

  • The legislatorsPurveyors of guidanceEnforcersCompliance managersSingle issue campaignersLawyersInsurersMedia

  • Only 59% of those questioned about Brent Spar were aware of the incident. (Shell spokesman, P.J., 5.2.96). 41% is a conservative estimate of the proportion of fatalists in the UK.

  • The U.S. oil industry has dumped thousands of oil rigs into the Gulf of Mexico. Thats because man-made structures like sunken ships or oil rigs create habitats for marine life quite similar to that of a coral reef. (Wall Street Journal, 6/9/95)

  • Government permission has been given for the disposal of the redundant structure in a designated deepwater Atlantic site. (Shell, Daily Mirror, (1.5.95) The British Government says that it has observed all the rules and that it must take a balanced andproportionate approach. (Guardian, 6.5.95)The U.S. oil industry has dumped thousands of oil rigs into the Gulf of Mexico. Thats because man-made structures like sunken ships or oil rigs create habitats for marine life quite similar to that of a coral reef. (Wall Street Journal, 6/9/95)

  • It is wrong to dump old cars in the village pond,and it is wrong to treat the sea as a dump.(Greenpeace, Dundee Courier, 6.2.96.

  • God has afforded only the twilight, as I may say, of Probability, suitable, I presume, to that state of Mediocrity and Probationership He has been pleased to place us in here.

    Concluding words of Peter Bernsteins Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk quoting Keynes, quoting Locke

  • Risk

  • Here be dragons

  • Be careful

    Woody Allen famously asked How do you make God laugh? Answer Tell him your plans.

    Risk management is an extraordinarily presumptuous occupation.

    Management and risk are two words that sit uncomfortably alongside each other.

    Some people claim to be able to distinguish between what they call actual or objective risk and perceived risk.

    Objective risk they argue is something that the experts, the risk managers, know, and perceived risk is the hazy, often wildly incorrect, knowledge that the rest of us have.

    But all risk is subjective. All risk is perceived. Risk is a word that refers to the future, and that exists only in our imaginations. And sometimes the experts perceptions of risk turn out to be wildly incorrect.

    Risk management involves speculating about this future, and acting upon our speculations. Our speculations frequently disagree, and our actions frequently conflict.

    So the belief that you can manage this future rests, as in all religions, on faith.

    Compared to many religious belief systems, the secular faith of risk management has a very brief institutional history.In May 2004 I typed the single word risk into Google and got 40 million hits. For purposes of comparison, I typed in God and sex. I repeated the exercise in September 2005 by which time risk had overtaken its principal competitors by a wide margin. Sadly this game can no longer be played. Risk reached 1.2 billiuon hits before Google must have decided that things had become ridiculous, and capped the process. In March 2007 risk had been cut back to about 300 million. Although a crude indicator, I suspect that this explosion of Google hits on risk mirrors and, for those connected to the Internet, amplifies concerns about things that might harm us. There is a frieze that runs around the lecture theatre of the Royal Geographical Societys lecture theatre on which are recorded 53 names of the heroes of the heroic age of geography. They provide an intriguing contrast to our concerns about risk.

    A quarter of them (highlighted in red) died on the job. There was no Adventure Licensing Authority. Drake died of dysentery off Panama in 1596. Scott either froze or starved to death in 1912 and Shackleton in South Georgia in 1922.Here we have a picture of Captain Cook about to meet his end in Hawaii in 1779. Had he failed to do a risk assessment? Or did he take a risk, and his number came up?

    Captain Cook was a risk manager. He, and all the others on the RGS list, knew that what they were doing was dangerous. Most of them were engaged in an enterprise that held out the prospect of enormous rewards of both fame and fortune. They were filling in the blank areas on Europeans maps of the world. They exemplified the venture capitalists slogans no risk, no reward and no pain, no gain.

    Modern risk managers are trying to fill in the blank area on the map of the future. Risk is a word that refers to the future. It exists only in the imagination. Risk management is future management, and as Gerald Ratner explained so well yesterday, its difficult.Lets fast forward to 21st century geography. In my department at University College London we must now produce risk assessments for all our final year students working on dissertations.

    The 69 page guide on our web site explains how this should be done.

    This is the first page. When I object that we are only required to assess significant risks, I am told that I cannot know if it is significant or not until I have assessed it. So everyine is enjoined to read all 69 pages because we might find a risk that we hadnt thought of.

    One gets started by clicking on the main hazard index.Which takes you to a hazard menu. If you click on Environment You get another menu. If you click on Terrain you are taken to the risk management part of the guide.Here we find the risk and the associated control measures. And here we find the advice that forms the title of this presentation ENSURE YOU CAN SEE WHERE YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR FEET BEFORE WALKING. And AVOID BACKING INTO FENCES.

    Look where you are putting your feet before walking is good advice routinely offered to three year olds. But why has it become thought necessary to offer such advice formally to adult students at a university?

    And how do we account for the signs of nervousness proliferating everywhere?

    A door to a BBC studio. I could not work out a way of exercising the caution that was being urged upon me.

    A notice in Russell Square tube station that I pass frequently on my way to College.

    A warning printed on Sainsburys shopping bags. Definitely good advice.

    Such notices serve the same purpose as juju charms. The people posting them presumably rely on them to ward off lawyers. I suspect that they are equally efficacious. When considering the task of managing risk it is important to be clear about the kind of risk one is dealing with. I suggest that it is helpful to distinguish three categoriesDirectly perceptible perceptible risk - eg climbing a tree, riding a bike, driving a car. This category of risk is dealt with instinctively and intuitively. You dont conduct a formal probabilistic risk assessment before you cross the road.Risk perceived through science - e.g. cholera, you need a microscope to see it and a scientific training to understand what you are looking at. Where historic accident data can plausibly projected into the future, actuarial science can inform risk managementVirtual risk - the scientists just dont know, or reputable scientists disagree. This is the realm of risk culturally constructed. If science cannot settle an issue it is wonderfully liberating - people, including scientists, are freed to argue from their established beliefs, prejudices and superstitions. This is an example of primordial management of a directly perceptible risk Anyone who has ever been in the presence of a toddler learning to toddle will be under no illusions about being in the presence of a serious risk managment exercise. This picture illustrates a number of attributes of risk management It is a balancing act - in this case a physical balancing act - but more generally an act in which the rewards of an act are balanced against the potential adverse consequences It is instinctive - successful risk management has been rewarded by evolutionIt is intuitive - we do not undertake a formal probabilistic risk assessment before we cross the road - or toddle across the roomIt is influenced by experience we learn about hot things, sharp things, who to trust etc through having (non-fatal) accidents, or witnessing others having them.it is modified by culture. This little fellow is clearly performing before an appreciative audience. Desired behaviour is being reinforced.A more abstract version of what is going on in the previous slide. I call it the risk thermostat.

    Oprisk managers, managers of railways, or the Navy, or the mental health services, or pharmaceutical companies do not have the option of zero risk - zero accidents. In the real world zero risk is not on offer.

    The only way they can achieve zero accidents is by going out of business.

    This model of risk management strikes some as an unacceptably radical idea. In June 2001 the BMJ proclaimed in an editorial that henceforth the use of the word accident would not be permitted in its pages, saying that the word suggested something unavoidable, However, most injuries and their precipitating events are predictable and preventable. That is why the BMJ has decided to ban the use of accident.

    What word should they use in its place? The English language may simply fail us here. They suggest injident injury producing incident.Institutional risk management.

    Two prominent features of most institutional risk management areIt strives for objectivity which, as we shall see, it usually strives for in vain, andIt suffers from bottom-loop bias

    If I am crossing the road to catch an approaching bus I perform the risk management balancing act in my head. The gaps in traffic that I will risk depend on how urgently I want to catch the bus will I be late for dinner? and how fearful I am of being hit.

    When risk management becomes institutionalised the specification of the risk managers job usually focuses solely on risk reduction. Judgements about what is safe or dangerous they are told should not be corrupted by contemplation of the rewards of risk taking.

    Reducing Risks Protecting People is the mantra of the Health and Safety Executive Britains pre-eminent risk manager.

    Fault trees and event trees are favourite tools in the quantitative risk assessors tool box.

    They set out clearly and systematically what is known about particular risks.

    They can be a useful first step in setting out what you think you know so long as you are not seduced by the probabilities on the right-hand side of the page. The Channel tunnel fire that closed the tunnel for six months shortly after it opened should have happened, according to the event tree analysis produced for the projects safety assessment, about once every 100 thousand years.

    The problem with event trees is that they are simplistic. They require feeding with probabilities that are often wild guesses. The real world is infinitely more complicated.Nevertheless they can serve as a useful metaphor for the way in which we cope with risk. We peer into the future through the dense foliage of the real-world event tree and, if we think we see a risk worth taking, we go for it.

    But occasionally something nasty that we perceived as a highly unlikely event happens. We are victims of bad luck.But our bad luck, with the benefit of hindsight, looks very different. Hindsight transforms the event tree into a fault tree.We end up in court confronted by a QC armed with a machete that he uses to chop away all the other branches of the fault tree. He leave only one branch that leads back to the original stupidity, and what looked like a risk worth taking becomes culpable negligence.We end up in court confronted by a QC armed with a machete that he uses to chop away all the other branches of the fault tree. He leave only one branch that leads back to the original stupidity, and what looked like a risk worth taking becomes culpable negligence.This is the Castlehaven Community Centre playground. Perhaps the worlds safest playground. When I enquired what had happened to the swings. I was told that they are packed away because kids might climb the fence and use them unsupervised and hurt themselves.Theres no risk too small Institutional risk management.

    Two prominent features of most institutional risk management areIt strives for objectivity which, as we shall see, it usually strives for in vain, andIt suffers from bottom-loop bias

    If I am crossing the road to catch an approaching bus I perform the risk management balancing act in my head. The gaps in traffic that I will risk depend on how urgently I want to catch the bus will I be late for dinner? and how fearful I am of being hit.

    When risk management becomes institutionalised the specification of the risk managers job usually focuses solely on risk reduction. Judgements about what is safe or dangerous they are told should not be corrupted by contemplation of the rewards of risk taking.

    Reducing Risks Protecting People is the mantra of the Health and Safety Executive Britains pre-eminent risk manager.

    Risk is a reflexive phenomenon - our behaviour changes our environment and our environment affects our behaviour.An increasingly important actors in this reflexive world are the regulator and the lawyer.

    What, with the benefit of foresight used to look like a risk worth taking, with the benefit of hindsight and a clever lawyer increasingly looks like culpable negligence.

    Most (all?) of the increased demand for risk assessments appears to be driven by the fear of having a legal accident. The perceived risk of legal liability for failure to comply with nebulously framed regulations is creating a new style of management with its own acronym APM (Ass Protection Mode).

    The risk assessments generated by this style of management have little to do with reducing accidents, and everything to do with ensuring that when the music stops the manager has a chair.

    Virtual risk an exampleStanley Prusiner, by virtue of his Nobel prize for his work on prions, arguably outranks all the other scientists in the debate about BSE and vCJD.In his evidence to the Governments BSE inquiry he declared himself unconvinced by the evidence so far produced that a connection had been established between BSE and vCJD.He was asked if he had changed his diet since learning of BSE. This is what he said.For me, that fact that he has been unable to establish a connection after 25 years looking is reason enough to put it a long way down my personal list of things to worry about. For Prusiner, the possibility seems to be reason enough not to eat lamb.

    Prusiners risk thermostat and mine have different perceptual filters. The weaker the scientific understanding of a risk the greater becomes the influence of these filters.

    These are caricatures, but nevertheless recognizable types that one encounters in debates about threats to the environment. With a little imagination you can begin to see them as personalities.The individualist - optimistic, confident, pragmatic - a gambler because you are likely to win more than you lose. Not much concerned about threats to the environment. Believes in devolved individual responsibility for risk management. If you cant prove its dangerous, assume its safe.The egalitarian - or environmentalist - treads lightly on the earth and invokes the precautionary principle at every turn. If you cant prove its safe assume its dangerous.Fatalists - have little control over their lives - que sera sera Hierarchist - here we find the institutional risk managers; big business, big government, big bureaucracy. They employ all the people in white coats to work out where the critical thresholds lie, and economists to devise optimal strategies for living within them. The Hierarchist sees nature as something to be exploited for his benefit; the Egalitarian sees nature as something to be obeyed and respected and interfered with as little as possible; the Hierarchist sees risk as a management problem. And the fatalist ducks if he sees something about to hit him They are certainly recognisable in the debate about BSE. Lets look at a few examples in the form of quotations that I have abstracted from the debate. These are caricatures, but nevertheless recognizable types that one encounters in debates about threats to the environment. With a little imagination you can begin to see them as personalities.The individualist - optimistic, confident, pragmatic - a gambler because you are likely to win more than you lose. Not much concerned about threats to the environment. Believes in devolved individual responsibility for risk management. If you cant prove its dangerous, assume its safe.The egalitarian - or environmentalist - treads lightly on the earth and invokes the precautionary principle at every turn. If you cant prove its safe assume its dangerous.Fatalists - have little control over their lives - que sera sera Hierarchist - here we find the institutional risk managers; big business, big government, big bureaucracy. They employ all the people in white coats to work out where the critical thresholds lie, and economists to devise optimal strategies for living within them. The Hierarchist sees nature as something to be exploited for his benefit; the Egalitarian sees nature as something to be obeyed and respected and interfered with as little as possible; the Hierarchist sees risk as a management problem. And the fatalist ducks if he sees something about to hit him They are certainly recognisable in the debate about BSE. Lets look at a few examples in the form of quotations that I have abstracted from the debate. These are caricatures, but nevertheless recognizable types that one encounters in debates about threats to the environment. With a little imagination you can begin to see them as personalities.The individualist - optimistic, confident, pragmatic - a gambler because you are likely to win more than you lose. Not much concerned about threats to the environment. Believes in devolved individual responsibility for risk management. If you cant prove its dangerous, assume its safe.The egalitarian - or environmentalist - treads lightly on the earth and invokes the precautionary principle at every turn. If you cant prove its safe assume its dangerous.Fatalists - have little control over their lives - que sera sera Hierarchist - here we find the institutional risk managers; big business, big government, big bureaucracy. They employ all the people in white coats to work out where the critical thresholds lie, and economists to devise optimal strategies for living within them. The Hierarchist sees nature as something to be exploited for his benefit; the Egalitarian sees nature as something to be obeyed and respected and interfered with as little as possible; the Hierarchist sees risk as a management problem. And the fatalist ducks if he sees something about to hit him They are certainly recognisable in the debate about BSE. Lets look at a few examples in the form of quotations that I have abstracted from the debate.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.1. The legislators - e.g. SOX, or in this country the new "safeguarding vulnerable groups bill" which will require vetting by the Criminal Records Bureau of about one third of the adult population. 2. The enforcers - e.g. SEC, FDA (there) HSE, FSA (here) - + Adventure licensing authority, Grandmaster licensing authority, MOT Inspectors, MHRA 3. Institutional compliance officers - e.g. those at the sharp end who often wildly over-interpret the regulatory requirements, like my departmental safety officer with her 69 page risk assessment manual. 4. Lawyers - especially of the no-win-no-fee sort 5. Insurers - who are too ready to settle out of court, and whose rising premiums make everyone nervous. 6. Single issue groups who focus obsessively on risks to the neglect of rewards.Directly perceived risk (much operational risk) is managed using judgement a combination of instinct, intuition and experience. We do not undertake a formal probabilistic risk assessment before crossing the road.Risk perceived through science. This is the realm of quantified risk assessment the scientist, the conductor of clinical trials, the epidemiologist, the actuary, the cost-benefit analyst. This is the circle that dominates the risk literature often, but not always successfully. However objective in appearance, assessments in this circle rest ultimately on subjective assumptions.Virtual risk. If science cannot settle an argument, people feel liberated to argue from their pre-established convictions, beliefs, prejudices, superstitions. Here we encounter arguments about values, the nature of nature, standards of proof, the precautionary principal and the role of regulation. In this circle, as with directly perceptible risk, we are thrown back on judgement.

    I am grateful to College for allowing me to ride my risk hobby horse on the fifth of November.A number of people have asked me if I would be proffering any advice about how to deal with the risks of this particular night.My advice for tonight, is the same as my advice for any night - or any day. Speaking with the authority vested in me as a professor of the University of London, and a student of the University of Life, my advice isBe careful!Or Lucky!