Non-probabilistic hazard evaluation

Abstract

Quantitative analysis of complex risk systems often faces three major problems. The first problem is the size of the system to be examined, since the number of possible system states increases exponentially with system size. The second problem is the topology of the system which may not be tree-like. The third problem is the consideration of randomness, since risk events are in many cases single, non-repetitive, therefore probability theory is inadequate. In order to handle this deficiency we suggest to apply logical risk analysis which traces back the main risk event to elementary, controllable risk events by means of the logical structure describing the operation of the risk system. For illustrations we give some very simple structures and a soil contamination problem as a real-size example.