When Is a Risk Assessment Deficient According to an Uncertainty-Based Risk Perspective?

Abstract

The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway (PSA-N) has recently adopted a new definition of risk: "the consequences of an activity with the associated uncertainty." The PSA-N has also been using "deficient risk assessment" for some time as a basis for assigning nonconformities in audit reports. This creates an opportunity to study the link between risk perspective and risk assessment quality in a regulatory context, and, in the present article, we take a hard look at the term "deficient risk assessment" both normatively and empirically. First, we perform a conceptual analysis of how a risk assessment can be deficient in light of a particular risk perspective consistent with the new PSA-N risk definition. Then, we examine the usages of the term "deficient" in relation to risk assessments in PSA-N audit reports and classify these into a set of categories obtained from the conceptual analysis. At an overall level, we were able to identify on what aspects of the risk assessment the PSA-N is focusing and where deficiencies are being identified in regulatory practice. A key observation is that there is a diversity in how the agency officials approach the risk assessments in audits. Hence, we argue that improving the conceptual clarity of what the authorities characterize as "deficient" in relation to the uncertainty-based risk perspective may contribute to the development of supervisory practices and, eventually, potentially strengthen the learning outcome of the audit reports.