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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Risk Modeling

The level of risk associated with any activity is related to how often adverse events occur (frequency), and their severity (consequences). This figure shows a typical illustration of these key aspects. Usually, if high consequence events are happening fairly often (quadrant B), then an active management approach is taken whereby the authorities do their utmost to eliminate or mitigate the risk. For high consequence, rare events (such as the sinking of a passenger vessel), expert opinion is usually relied upon to assess and quantify the risk factors (quadrant D). For more frequent low-level occurrences (quadrant A), sufficient data is often available to perform the assessments quantitatively. All of these levels of risk must be included in a comprehensive model, as they are in MARIS.
The MARIS model incorporates databases on the different types and frequency of maritime activities, the incidents resulting from them, and the associated response measures when problems arise. The green boxes in the figure below highlight some of the sources of information used in the various model components. Incident data has been collected from several agencies including the Canadian Coast Guard Search and Rescue (SAR), the Transportation Safety Board (TSB), the Water Incident Research Alliance (WIRA), and the Red Cross. Agencies that provide incident response include the Canadian Coast Guard SAR, the Department of National Defence (DND), the RCMP, and the Civil Air Rescue Emergency Service (CASARA). All of these are fed into the MARIS risk models, the results of which can be used for improved prevention programs or regulations, as well as planning for improved response.