Citation

Kirchsteiger C. Safety Sci. 2004; 42(2): 159-165.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

In May 2000, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), and especially its Nuclear Safety Unit and the Technological Risks Unit, organised a large International Workshop in Stresa/Italy to review the status of technological risk assessment across different industry sectors (power industry, chemical process, waste, transport sectors, food).1 Throughout the workshop's presentations and discussions of risk assessment practices across different industries and countries, it became clear that there are many similarities in risk assessment at a generic technical level. The process of risk-based decision making can be broken down into a few basic steps, a sequence which could--although there are differences in terminology--widely be accepted across industries. However, the fulfilment of each step is heavily dependent on the specific cultural and regulatory context. Most workshop participants agreed that comparative risk assessment along harmonised procedures could significantly help the understanding of decisions made in other countries or sectors and promote a transparent decision making process in which all stakeholders can be involved.It was generally felt that any successful "standardisation" should focus on the process underlying risk assessment, and not attempt to harmonise risk criteria. On the other hand, it should not be restricted solely to technical elements of risk assessment, but cover in some way also aspects of the risk management and thus of decision making. Standardisation should not prescribe a particular risk assessment approach. The main objective of any such effort should be to help stakeholders see more clearly the range of possibilities and assist decision makers in decisions which only they can make. For this reason, it was proposed that a "universal risk assessment standard" is neither desirable nor realistic with regard to its wide acceptance and use, but that rather a "template", which maps out the technical steps in risk assessment in a generic way, should be considered for development.This template should:-focus on technical aspects involved in risk assessment, e.g. by explaining what is meant with a certain term in a certain risk assessment context;-include also generic components of decision making, e.g. by showing which are the common elements in making decisions, however not attempt to lay down what "tolerable" levels of risk might be; and-avoid the duplication of efforts already done, and build on existing formal standards.Following the workshop, JRC drafted various project discussion papers which were discussed and agreed upon with possibly interested parties and evaluated the feasibility of a project aiming at the development of such a template ("Compass for Risk Assessment"). This paper describes the status of this initiative.