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Oboni Riskope Associates Inc. www.riskope.com 500-1045 Howe StreetVancouver, B.C., V6Z 2A9
What Fukushima (2010) nuclear accident, the Twin Towers (9/11) terrorattack, deadly traffic accidents and Aquila earthquake (Italy) have incommon?
An update of Whitman's and ANCOLD tolerability/acceptability curves (casualtiesfrom man-made or natural catastrophes, large dams failures) shows evidence for aG8-wide societal acceptability threshold.By Franco & Cesar Oboni, Oboni Riskope Associates Inc. Vancouver,www.riskope.com
As already repeatedly stressed, balanced, sensible decisions related to mitigation and variousaspects of planning can be taken only if risks are compared with a tolerability/acceptabilitycriterion. The term tolerability generally refers to physical losses, business interruption losses etc.,whereas acceptability refers to life losses, casualties.
Whitman and ANCOLD tolerability/acceptability thresholds
Acceptability criteria were first explicitly established in the mid-eighties by researchers such asWhitman and Morgan. Their original curves (which used a “double scale”, as they simultaneouslydisplayed physical losses and casualties -a concept that is quite impopular and therefore rarely usedtoday) are reproduced in Figure 1, together with another set established by the Australian NationalCommittee on Large Dams Incorporated (ANCOLD Inc). In general, authors present a "low" curve,i.e. a conservative one, and a “high”curve, or an aggressive one.Operational risks tolerability curves can be established, generally for physical losses, businessinterruption, etc. Figure 2 shows a real example (names have been replaced with achronims to protect client's confidentiality, where major risk scenarios are compared to client's tolerability.
Why to update?
For a recent study, it became necessary to check if an update of Whitman curves was due,specifically in terms of human losses (casualties). The “feeling” was indeed that since our world haschanged, demographics have changed, airplanes are larger, media coverage has changed and, aboveall, our social sensitivity has changed, the curves have to be updated.(c)Oboni Riskope Associates In. Page 1 of 5
 
It also seems that if on one hand we are very sensitive to the single loss, or personal tragedy, on theother, we are becoming numbed to large numbers.
Fig. 1 TolerabilityAcceptability thresholds defined by Whitman (1984) and Ancold (for each one the"conservative" and the "aggressive" thresholds are displayed). The bubbles display common eventsfor various industries. In the original papers the horizontal axis showed casualties as well asmonetary losses -a concept that is considered quite unpopular nowadays.Fig. 2
 
Real life Risk Assessment results, with an operational tolerability curve superimposed to the"risk landscape"
 
of a major operation (fourteen risk scenarios are displayed).
(c)Oboni Riskope Associates In. Page 2 of 5
 
Defining an updated societal, large scale, G8 acceptability threshold
Instead of using Riskope's (www.riskope.com) proprietary algorithm to define thetolerability/acceptability threshold, for the sake of this exercise, we proceeded empirically, usingfacts emerging from the G8 countries, including Japan, United States, Italy as follows:
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Several dozens casualties per week-end, several times per year, lead the Italian governmentto invest a large capital in a continuous real time speed checking and enforcing system(Traffic Tutor), as the situation was intolerable.
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A quake causing 308 casualties (Aquila), thirty years after another catastrophic one (Irpinia)lead to the conviction of a large number of public officers for mass man-slaughter andvarious other charges (no such reaction for the Irpinia one, thirty years before).
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A terrorist act (9/11, New York) caused approx. 3,000 casualties and the USA “declared war on terrorism”.
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A quake and a tsunami (Fukushima) with a wave considered to be larger than the MaximumCredible Event (MCE) have caused an evacuation zone of 20km, then 30km radius, withvery large number of afflicted people (which may become ill in the future); Germany andother countries have decided to stop their nuclear energy programs, showing that the eventwas considered intolerable.In Figure 3 we show the empirical curve derived from these facts in blue colour, and we display in black colour (for purposes of comparison with Whitman original acceptability) a least-squaresapproximation of the blue curve data. For the sake of this exercise we have extended Whitman'scurves to the right, to cover larger casualties events.Figure 3 displays in green colour the extended Whitman lower bound (lower limit of societaltolerability
1
) roughly passing through 10
-6
/year (1/1,000,000) and 1M death, i.e. a scenario with a probability at the lower limit of credibility and losses comparable to a city destroyed to the ground(a scenario one could imagine, for example, in Naples, with a quake and a catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, for which Italian Authorities perform Civil Protection drills, but do not enforceseismic upgrade of buildings, as opposed to the high levels of capital investments allotted in thesame country to flood protection).The orange couloured threshold (Fig.3) corresponds to a theoretical constant-risk tolerability(meaning that the product between the number of casulaties and the probability is constant, in thiscase equal to one). This threshold is remarkably parallel, although slightly converging for higher casualties events, to the updated acceptability threshold (in black), showing that G8 societal perception leads to lower acceptability than constant risk for larger events.
1The upper limit of Whitman seems today difficult to defend because it is excessively "permissive", or inother words, shocking to the public.
(c)Oboni Riskope Associates In. Page 3 of 5
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