Validation of risk analysis methods: foundations, framework, and procedures

在安全科学和风险研究领域，最近有人呼吁加强研究领域的基础，重点是开发识别、分析、评估和管理风险和安全的概念、框架和方法。具体地说，几位知名学者发现，有必要更多地关注为特定风险分析和管理方法的有效性建立经验证据。这一点很重要，因为如果不验证哪些方法和方法在什么环境下工作，很可能会浪费组织资源，风险也不会得到有效管理。有鉴于此，该提案旨在促进对风险研究有效性的科学理解，重点是工程系统中的风险，特别是风险分析方法。制定了四个分目标。首先，在科学文献中如何理解风险分析的有效性方面获得了洞察力，这对于避免在拟议的研究中处理这一概念时的误解是重要的。其次，分析了科学文献中风险分析应用中使用的方法，以及风险管理标准中建议的方法。这对于确保第四个目标的研究涉及最常用的方法，并与风险研究的趋势相联系是重要的。第三，开发了一个通用框架来评估风险分析方法的有效性。这是研究方案的核心方面，它将风险研究(风险概念、事故理论)的基本原理和思想与系统工程和验证研究的思想联系起来，说明了第一个研究目标的结果。最后，通过制定具体风险分析方法的验证程序，将选定的若干风险分析方法的通用框架具体化。拟议的研究将注重推进工程系统风险研究的基本基础的理论工作与以实践为导向的工作相结合，以制定验证风险分析的程序。这项基础性的科学工作是必要的，可以作为制定有充分基础的风险分析验证程序的基础。未来将需要更具社会科学性质的研究，以便与风险分析员和审计员一起测试这些程序，并在风险管理背景下解决验证的社会和组织方面的问题。从长远来看，拟议的研究计划旨在通过实证证据，证明哪些风险分析方法在什么类型的系统和什么样的组织环境中更有效，从而改善组织对资源的使用。这可能会对所涉组织产生积极的经济影响，为审计公司带来新的商业机会，通常还会改善风险管理和更安全的工程系统。

Within safety science and risk research, there are recent calls to strengthen the foundations of the research field, focusing on the development of concepts, frameworks, and methods for identifying, analyzing, assessing, and managing risk and safety. Specifically, several leading scholars have identified a need for more focus on building empirical evidence for the validity of specific risk analysis and management approaches. This is important, because without validation of which methods and approaches work in what context, it is likely that organizational resources are wasted, and that risks are not effectively managed. In light of this, the proposal aims to advance the scientific understanding of validity in risk research, focusing on risk in engineering systems, and particularly on risk analysis methods. Four sub-objectives are formulated. First, insights are gained in how risk analysis validity has been understood in the scientific literature, which is important to avoid misunderstanding when addressing this concept in the proposed research. Second, an analysis is made of which methods are used in risk analysis applications in the scientific literature, and which are suggested in risk management standards. This is important to make sure that research in the fourth objective addresses the most used methods, and connects with trends in risk research. Third, a generic framework is developed to evaluate the validity of risk analysis methods. This is the core aspect of the research proposal, which connects fundamental principles and ideas in risk research (risk concepts, accident theories) with ideas from system engineering and validation research, accounting for the results of the first research objective. Finally, the generic framework is made concrete for a selected number of risk analysis methods, through making validation procedures for specific risk analysis methods. The proposed research combines theoretical work, focusing on advancing the fundamental basis of risk research for engineering systems, with practice-oriented work to develop procedures for validating risk analyses. This basic scientific work is necessary to serve as a basis for developing well-grounded risk analysis validation procedures. Future research with a more social science character will be needed to test these procedures with risk analysts and auditors, and to address social and organizational aspects of validation in a risk management context. In the long run, the proposed research program aims to improve organizational use of resources through empirical evidence of which risk analysis methods work better, for what type of systems, and in what kinds of organizational contexts. This can have positive economic implications for the organizations involved, give rise to new business opportunities for auditing companies, and generally to better risk management and safer engineering systems.