What is the process of evaluating potential risks in a projected activity or undertaking called?

Answer from top 10 papers

Risk assessment is a systematic process of evaluating the potential risks that may be involved in a projected activity or undertaking. It is a critical component of occupational health and safety management, aiming to identify hazards, evaluate associated risks, and determine appropriate ways to eliminate or control those risks to ensure the safety and health of workers (Djunaidi & Umami, 2024; Moon et al., 2021; Pinto et al., 2012).
Interestingly, while risk assessment is a common practice, the methodologies and approaches can vary significantly. Some studies emphasize the importance of qualitative assessments, which may not always predict quantitative risk accurately, necessitating a subsequent quantitative risk assessment for a more comprehensive analysis (Djunaidi & Umami, 2024). Others introduce robust fuzzy regression to handle the imprecision inherent in linguistic risk evaluations (Pinto et al., 2012), or probabilistic linguistic term sets to manage hesitant risk evaluations (Moon et al., 2021). Additionally, the concept of cumulative risk assessment (CRA) is highlighted as an underutilized approach in occupational settings that considers combined risks from chemical and non-chemical exposures (Arbaiy et al., 2018).
In summary, risk assessment is an essential process in various industries to manage and mitigate potential hazards in the workplace. The literature reveals a diversity of methods and tools, from qualitative and quantitative assessments to more complex models incorporating fuzzy logic and probabilistic linguistic terms, all aimed at improving the accuracy and effectiveness of risk assessments. These varied approaches underscore the dynamic nature of risk assessment and the ongoing need to refine and adapt methodologies to address the complexities of workplace safety (Arbaiy et al., 2018; Djunaidi & Umami, 2024; Moon et al., 2021; Pinto et al., 2012).

Source Papers

Ensuring the Quality of Occupational Safety Risk Assessment

In work environments, the main aim of occupational safety risk assessment (OSRA) is to improve the safety level of an installation or site by either preventing accidents and injuries or minimizing their consequences. To this end, it is of paramount importance to identify all sources of hazards and assess their potential to cause problems in the respective context. If the OSRA process is inadequate and/or not applied effectively, it results in an ineffective safety prevention program and inefficient use of resources. An appropriate OSRA is an essential component of the occupational safety risk management process in industries. In this article, we performed a survey to elicit the relative importance for identified OSRA tasks to enable an in-depth evaluation of the quality of risk assessments related to occupational safety aspects on industrial sites. The survey involved defining a questionnaire with the most important elements (tasks) for OSRA quality assessment, which was then presented to safety experts in the mining, electrical power production, transportation, and petrochemical industries. With this work, we expect to contribute to the main question of OSRA in industries: "What constitutes a good occupational safety risk assessment?" The results obtained from the questionnaire showed that experts agree with the proposed OSRA process decomposition in steps and tasks (taxonomy) and also with the importance of assigning weights to obtain knowledge about OSRA task relevance. The knowledge gained will enable us, in the near future, to build a framework to evaluate OSRA quality for industrial sites.

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Open Access
Comparison of the Qualitative and the Quantitative Risk Assessment of Hazardous Substances Requiring Management under the Occupational Safety and Health Act in South Korea

The risk assessment of hazardous substances has become increasingly important for the efficient prevention and management of various diseases or accidents caused by increased amounts of hazardous substances in the workplace. In this study, risk assessment was conducted for 36 kinds of hazardous substances requiring management by using qualitative and quantitative risk assessments. Qualitative risk assessment was performed by multiplying the exposure level class by the hazard class according to the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency’s (KOSHA) Chemical Hazard Risk Management (CHARM). The quantitative risk assessment was followed by a four-step risk assessment system presented in the Guidelines for Hazard Risk Assessment of Chemicals (KOSHA GUIDE W-6-2016). In the quantitative assessments, we presented a new method of classifying risk levels into four steps, much like qualitative assessments. In this study, the quantitative risk assessment was considered difficult to predict through qualitative risk assessment. Therefore, it is necessary to perform a quantitative risk assessment after a qualitative risk assessment for a higher level of risk assessment.

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Open Access
HAZARD IDENTIFICATION USING THE HAZARD IDENTIFICATION AND RISK ASSESSMENT AND DETERMINING CONTROL (HIRADC) TECHNIQUE (CASE STUDY AT LABORATORIES AT UNIVERSITAS ISLAM NEGERI SUMATERA UTARA)

Every workplace has a risk of accidents and health problems. The university is a workplace that has a variety of laboratories with a variety of risks, so prevention and control efforts are needed to prevent accidents and health problems for lecturers, staff, and students. Prevention and control efforts are attempts to build a culture of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in Higher Education. This study was conducted to determine the type of hazard, risk assessment based on the source of danger and risk assessment based on the type of hazard in all laboratories at UINSU. Hazard identification and risk assessment were analyzed with Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment and Determining Control (HIRADC) Technique. The identification results obtained by sources of hazards in the form of chemical hazard. Public Health Science Faculty has 2 sources of potential hazard in high risk level and 2 sources of potential hazards in high risk level were in Science and Technology Faculty. It is expected that the identification results can be evaluated and used as reference material to determine efforts to repair and control the risk of hazards in the laboratory at UINSU. The laboratories need to have guidelines and procedures for Occupational Safety Health.

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Open Access