Conceptual Basis of Risk Assessment at Department of Energy (DOE) Sites. Charles W. Powers, Bernard D. Goldstein, Jack Moore, Gilbert S. Omenn, and Arthur Upton, CRESP, Piscataway, NJ 08855-1179
DOE has pioneered the use of a multi-factor, qualitative risk evaluation mechanism to evaluate budget priorities in its annual budget development process. Perhaps nowhere else in the federal government have risk evaluation tools been so fully incorporated in organizational decisionmaking. Every site now evaluates activities it proposes to fund in Risk Data Sheets. The Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), whose senior leadership are the authors of this presentation, has observed every level of the development and application of the current mechanism. And some groups within the Consortium have had specific responsibility for the review of how the current system is achieving its goals. This presentation will summarize some of those findings and explore where the current DOE approach sits within the various approaches to risk evaluation. Based on these conceptual foundations, the presentation will add a level of analysis not previously done in respect of the DOE model. Finally, we will recommend some fundamental conceptual factors to be incorporated in any risk evaluation approach which attempts to shape decision making about the work of public entities. The focus will be issues including sharper definition of and weighting of risk factors (particularly those such as ecological risk and social/cultural risk), the need to consider the effects on risk of the activity itself and not merely the pre- and post-activity effects, and the importance of anchoring the unit of risk analysis in geographically specific terms so that the risk evaluation always has a common referent.
Research supported by the Department of Energy through funds to the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation.