ENG 310

Ethics in Engineering
Fall 2020
Dr. Elias M. Nassar
Reviewed by: Dr Ali Awada

Ch. 8
Ethical Aspects of Technical Risks
 Tacoma bridge
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-zczJXSxnw
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXyG68_caV4
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrqdFxpM_N4

 Citicorp
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAz55BvLrAo
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOYVaYZvg2Q

 DC-10 Disaster
 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa16vd
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-3YgAXLsGA
 Asbestos
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKqM-AhDGig
 Geenhouse effect
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtW2rrLHs08

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnrQ4fxZX_E
 Risk Matrix
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-jfcoR2W0
 Senior project
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpvZvs91szA
 Chernobyl
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ptI6Pi3GA
 Event Trees and Fault Trees
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIy8coFkMQQ
 Risk Engineering website
 https://risk-engineering.org/
 Other resources
 https://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/Missions/Risk-Analysis/Risk-
Analysis-Gateway/Learning-Center/
 FMEA
 https://www.coursera.org/lecture/six-sigma-analyze/fmea-part-3-
JCpTq
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Ej466IfZs
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ7CSFA-Jd0
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9phjGHrrhhg
 Root Cause Analysis (5 whys)
 https://www.coursera.org/lecture/six-sigma-analyze/5-whys-i5OBw
Video sequence
 Chernobyl
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ptI6Pi3GA

 Risk Assesment Matrix

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-jfcoR2W0

 Senior project FMEA

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Ej466IfZs

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ7CSFA-Jd0

 Detailed FMEA
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9phjGHrrhhg
 Definition of Terms
 Safety is sometimes defined as the absence of risk and
hazards.
 Usually, a technological product cannot be made absolutely
safe in this sense.
 Safety therefore also often refers to the situation in which
the risks have been reduced in as far that is reasonably
feasible and desirable.
 So conceived, safety is related to the notion of acceptable
risk.
 For a number of reasons, it is not always possible to predict
the hazards of a technology beforehand and to express
them reliably as risks.
 Definition of Terms
 One reason is the complexity of causal relations between
potential causal agents and specific undesirable effects.

 The impossibility of expressing hazards in risks may also be

due to uncertainty, i.e. a lack of knowledge.

 Uncertainty may, in turn, be caused by a number of

underlying factors, like modelling errors.

 In a more circumscribed sense, the notion of uncertainty is

often used to refer to situations where we know the type
of consequences, but cannot meaningfully attribute
probabilities to the occurrence of such consequences.
 Definition of Terms
 In such cases, the term ignorance is often used.

 What is typical of ignorance is that we do not know what

we do not know. Therefore it is extremely hard, if not
impossible, to anticipate the consequences of ignorance
because often we do not know what we have to be
prepared for.

 The impossibility of expressing hazards in risks may also be

due to ambiguity.

 Ambiguity refers to the fact that different interpretations or

meanings may be given to the measurement,
characterization, aggregation and evaluation of hazards.
 Risk Assessment

 To judge whether certain hazards are acceptable, an

attempt is usually first made to map them and express
them as risks.

 This takes place by carrying out so-called risk

assessments.

 In engineering there are many types and methods for risk

assessment.
 The exact methods differ from one engineering domain to
the other. FMEA, Root Cause Analysis, etc.

 We shall limit ourselves here to a general overview.

 Risk Assessment
A risk assessment usually consists of four steps:

1- Release assessment.
Releases are any physical effects that can lead to harm and
that originate in a technical installation. Examples are shock
waves, radiation, and the spread of hazardous substances.

In the case of incidental releases, an important step is the

detection of so-called failure modes and accident scenarios.
These are series of events that lead to the failure of the
installation or to an accident.
 Risk Assessment
 The probability of the occurrence of such scenarios is calculated
too.This takes place in two ways.

 In the first method, the probability of certain accidents occurring

is calculated using statistical data about accidents in the past. If
such statistical data are absent event trees and fault trees
are often used to calculate the probability of an accident.

 For event trees we start with a certain event and consider

what events will follow. For fault trees we move backwards
from an unwanted event (a fault) to the events that preceded
and could have led to the undesirable event. To each event in the
event or fault tree a probability value is attached on the basis of
failure data concerning components. Next, the probability of a
specific accident scenario is calculated.
 Risk Assessment

2- Exposure assessment.
In this step the aim is to predict the exposure of vulnerable
subjects like human beings to certain releases.

Exposure assessment usually describes what vulnerable

subjects (human beings, animals, the environment) are
exposed to a certain release, through what mechanisms (e.g.
inhalation of toxic substances by humans) and the intensity,
frequency and duration of the exposure.
 Risk Assessment
3- Consequence assessment.

In the third step the focus is on determining the relationship

between exposure and harmful consequences.

In some risk assessments, the analysis is limited to acute harm

or to the number of direct fatalities. In other cases, long-term
effects on health or the environment are also considered.

An important part of this step is usually the determining of

dose-response relationships. Such relationships can be
established through tests on animals, epidemiology and
models
 Risk Assessment
4- Risk estimation.

In the fourth step the risk is determined and presented using

the results obtained earlier.
In this step we determine in what measure the risk is
expressed.
This can be done using the number of expected fatalities per
time unit, for example, or the reduced lifespan of people that
work or live in the neighborhood of an installation.
 In many cases, risk assessments only have limited reliability.
This is because the results often depend on the original
assumptions made, (example dioxin).
 One relevant issue is also the degree of evidence that is
needed to establish a risk during a risk assessment on basis
of, for example, epidemiological data.
 Risk Assessment
 In establishing a risk on basis of a body of empirical data
one might make two kinds of mistakes.

 One can establish a risk when there is actually no risk (a

so-called type I error) or one can mistakenly conclude that
there is no risk while there actually is a risk (a so-
called type II error).

 Science traditionally aims at avoiding type I errors because

one usually does not want to assume a hypothesis as
knowledge unless there is strong evidence for it.
 Risk Assessment
 Several authors have argued that in the specific context of
risk assessment it is often more important to avoid type II
errors.

 The reason for this is that risk assessment not just aims at
establishing scientific truth but also has a practical aim, i.e.
to provide the knowledge on basis of which decisions can
be made about whether it is necessarily to protect the
public against certain risks.

 It might be worse not to protect the public against a risk

than to take unnecessary precautions against a risk that
turns out not to exist.
 Risk Communication
 According to some professional codes of conduct,
engineers must inform the public about risks and hazards
(see Chapter 2).
 In some cases specialists are used, who are called risk
communicators.
 Risk communication raises a number of ethical
questions
 A first question is whether risk communication should only
inform or also (try to) persuade.
 Can the government discourage smoking, or should it only
inform about the risks of smoking?
 Another question is whether people should always be
informed about risks even if it is not always in their best
interests or if it is likely that they will interpret the
information the wrong way.

 As a risk communicator, should you inform people of the

risk of burglary if people have to leave their homes as
quickly as possible because of the safety risk as a result of a
coming hurricane?

 In both examples, the contrast between duty ethics and

consequentialism plays a role in the background.
 Risk Communication
 From the perspective of duty ethics, the consequences of
risk communication are not relevant for the question
“What is responsible risk communication?”

 Risk communication must first be honest (do not lie and

always tell the complete truth).

 Next to that, it must respect the freedom of choice and

autonomy of people and hence not be paternalistic (see
also Section 1.5.2 on paternalism).

 Here, the principle of informed consent is of importance

too. It implies that you must not try to convince people but
only inform them.
 Risk Communication
 From the perspective of consequentialism, the
considerations and conclusions would be quite different in
some cases.

 Risk communication is judged by means of the goodness of

the consequences.

 Attempts to convince people by means of risk

communication or withholding certain information can be
morally right if it results in good consequences
 The Precautionary Principle
 The precautionary principle originates from the Rio
Declaration, the closing statement of the first conference of
the United Nations on sustainable development, which was
held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992:

“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage,

lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason
for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent
environmental degradation.”

In other words, we should not give future generations

problems that we allow to continue because we cannot agree
about the question whether there are serious environmental
effects.
The Precautionary Principle
 The Precautionary Principle
 The precautionary principle suggested that where there is an
identifiable risk of serious or irreversible harm, it may be
appropriate to place the burden of proof – which advocates
inaction until cause is proven – on the person or
organization proposing the activity that is potentially
harmful to the environment or risky.

 The principle permits the taking of preventative measures

without having to wait until the reality and seriousness of
the threat become fully known.
 The Precautionary Principle
 The main problem of the precautionary principle is that it
seems to forbid too much.

 Opponents point out that a number of important technical

innovations that we now consider to be desirable would not
have been implemented is we adhered to the precautionary
principle.

 According to them, the precautionary principle places

absurdly high demands – in fact they are nonsensical
demands since you can never prove that something will not
cause damage.
 The precautionary principle
 It seems more justifiable, though, to demand that we have
reasonable grounds rather than incontrovertible proof that
there will be no damage. But what is reasonable?

 Another problem lies in the cost effectiveness. If we are

ignorant of which damage will occur and especially what
the chances are of such damage occurring, it is particularly
difficult to say something about when a measure will be cost
effective
 The Precautionary Principle
 The principle can, however, also be applied to unknown
risks and we will discuss that application here.

 The principle is mainly suitable for situations in which we

cannot fully express hazards as risks because we have
insufficient scientific knowledge.

 In general the precautionary principle states that

precautionary measures must be taken if there are
indications of a certain hazards, despite the fact that the
hazards cannot be completely scientifically proven.
 The Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle as a prescriptive principle
contains four dimensions:
 If there is (1) a threat,
 which is (2) uncertain,
 then (3) some kind of action
 (4) is mandatory
(Sandin 1999).

Examples
 Cell phones
 Power lines
Cell Phones
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sNA
y1O6WfU
Quiz
Which two of the following assertions are true?

 The precautionary principle should be used to try to

avoid all risks.

 The precautionary principle is anti-science.

 The precautionary principle shifts the burden of proof.

 The precautionary principle invokes preventative action.