A Quantitative Risk Assessment Approach

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Abstract Security and health, safety and environment (HSE) departments encounter several challenges and use different methodologies when carrying out security risk assessments. Security risks have often been evaluated through qualitative, intuitive, or "gut- feeling" approaches. This paper describes how an oilfield services company decided to approach security risk assessment in an innovative way, combining qualitative professional advice with quantitative analysis. The paper examines the differences between how security and HSE personnel commonly carry out risk assessments and the ways that security personnel generally come to their conclusions based on experience, intuition, or intelligence. The paper also considers whether these kinds of assessments are qualitative or quantitative. The author considers whether it is acceptable for experts in a field to carry out qualitative assessments without demonstrating how they arrived at their conclusions and explores whether, instead, a combination of qualitative and quantitative assessment should be used in all cases. In addition, the differences between risk and threat, risk levels and alert states, and prevention and mitigation measures are discussed. The paper also defines specific problems in integrating security assessments into a company's management system and where and how qualitative versus quantitative assessments fit. The paper concludes that the oilfield services company has demonstrated success in helping nonprofessional managers to better understand and manage security risk through an innovative approach: using qualitative professional input and combining it with quantitative analysis for a simpler and more consistent output. It is suggested that the oil and gas industry would benefit from a common approach to risk assessment and that the development and publication of agreed industry guidelines would enable all companies to have access to this common approach.