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

在安全科学和风险研究中，最近有人呼吁加强研究领域的基础，重点是发展识别、分析、评估和管理风险和安全的概念、框架和方法。具体来说，一些主要学者已经确定需要更多地关注建立具体风险分析和管理方法有效性的经验证据。这是很重要的，因为如果没有验证哪些方法和方法在什么上下文中工作，很可能会浪费组织的资源，并且无法有效地管理风险。鉴于此，本提案旨在促进风险研究中对有效性的科学理解，重点关注工程系统中的风险，特别是风险分析方法。制定了四个子目标。首先，在科学文献中如何理解风险分析有效性方面获得了见解，这对于在拟议的研究中解决这一概念时避免误解非常重要。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使用的方法。这对于确保第四个目标中的研究涉及最常用的方法，并与风险研究的趋势联系起来是很重要的。第三，建立了评估风险分析方法有效性的通用框架。这是研究计划的核心方面，它将风险研究的基本原理和思想（风险概念、事故理论）与系统工程和验证研究的思想联系起来，这是第一个研究目标的结果。最后，通过对具体风险分析方法的验证程序，对选定的几种风险分析方法进行了总体框架的具体化。建议的研究将理论工作结合起来，重点是推进工程系统风险研究的基础，以及以实践为导向的工作，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，可以作为开发有充分根据的风险分析验证程序的基础。未来将需要更具社会科学特征的研究来与风险分析师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经验证据来改善组织对资源的利用，这些证据表明哪种风险分析方法更有效，适用于哪种类型的系统，以及在哪种类型的组织环境中。这可以对相关组织产生积极的经济影响，为审计公司带来新的商业机会，并且通常可以更好地进行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.