The presentation introduces safety risk management in work environments, and a risk model to calculate the personal risk for individual workers with the relation of their distance from the risk source.

1. Risk and Safety in Work Environments
Mahsa Teimourikia, PhD Student
Supervised by: Prof. Mariagrazia Fugini
Politecnico di Milano
mahsa.teimourikia@polimi.it
June 2015

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Outlines
• Motivation and Objectives
• Overview of our research
• Definitions
• Methodology:
• Risk Assessment
• Future Work

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Motivations
[1] K. Smith, Environmental hazards: assessing risk and reducing disaster, Routledge, 2013.
• In environmental risk management, providing
security and safety for people and various
resources dynamically, according what happens
in the environment is an open issue [1].
• In monitored environments, where risks can be
acknowledged via sensors and spatial data
technologies, risk should be assessed to be able
to provide required safety and security.

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The Definition of Risk
Risk: hazards and abnormalities recognized in an
environment that indicate a threat to the
infrastructures and/or the civilians
• (e.g., If sensors indicate gas leak, there is a risk
of fire and explosion.).
• Risks can be avoided via preventive strategies
(e.g., closing the gas flow).
• Risks contain attributes like Type, IntensityLevel,
and Location.

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The Steps in Risk Management

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Risk Assessment (ISO 31000:2009)
• Risk Identification: A process to understand
what could happen, how, when and why
• Risk Analysis: Concerned with developing an
understanding of each risk, its consequences,
and the likelihood of those consequences to
happen.
• Risk Evaluation: Involves making a decision
about the level of risk and the priority for
attention through the application the criteria
developed when the context was established.

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Risk Assessment (ISO 31000:2009)
• Risk assessment is a methodological framework for
determining the nature and extent of the risk associated
with an activity. Including:
– Identification of relevance sources (threats,
hazards, opportunities).
– Cause and consequence analysis, including
assessment of exposure and vulnerabilities.
– Risk description.
• The risk assessment provides a description of risk
related to loss of lives and injuries as a result of these
hazards, based on relevant data, models and expert
judgments. The assessment thus produces knowledge
about safety related phenomena, processes, events, etc.;

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Risk Treatment (ISO 31000:2009)
• Involves evaluation and selection from options,
prioritizing and implementing the selected treatment
through a planned process.
• Options to be considered during risk treatment:
– Avoiding the risk by deciding not to start or
continue with the activity that gives rise to the
risk.
– Removing the risk source
– Changing the likelihood
– Changing the consequences
– …

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Main Risk Assessment Methods
• Qualitative Techniques:
– Check lists, what-if Analysis, Safety Audits, Task
Analysis, STEP technique, HAZOP
• Quantitative Techniques:
– PRAT Technique, DMRA Technique, Risk
measures of societal risk, QRA technique, QADS,
CREA method, PEA method, WRA
• Hybrid Techniques:
– HEAT/HFEA, FTA, ETA, RBM

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Going back to our research

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The Risk Management System (RMS) [2]
• The RMS receives the inputs from sensors and
monitoring devices, recognizes the risks in the
environment and produces a Risk Map and preventive
Strategies accordingly.
[2] M. Fugini, C. Raibulet, and L. Ubezio, "Risk assessment in work environments: modeling and simulation,"
Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, vol. 24, no. 18, pp. 2381-2403, 2012.

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What we consider...
In our context we consider:
 The use of risk definition patterns to avoid
malformed definitions
 The use of best practices to define risk
patterns to avoid missing some risks
 The indication of strategies for risk
management, to be executed through a set
of corrective actions.

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What we consider...
The definition of risk implies the specification of the following
information:
 A risk name that clearly identify it. To
identify a risk the system must learn from
BP, namely:
 Workers experience
 Working environment law
 Rescue/Safety force repots
 Accident statistical information
 A verbal/textual definition of the risk.

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What we consider...
And prescriptions:
 Identify the causes of the risk
 Identify the events and their correlation to
identify a risk situation
 Identify the measure for the level of risk
 Identify by which means such measures can be
extracted from the working environment and the
acquisition strategies.
 Enumerate the actions performed on the
environment to reduce the risk level
 Identify by which means it would be possible to
check that the proposed preventive action have
been applied.

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What we consider: Risk Levels
What is the risk level? How to model a risk level?
 Each risk should be associated with a risk
level expressing its severity.
 Not all risks lead to the same
consequences.
Why risk level should be modeled?
 To maintain the level of risk to the lowest
possible
 In case of multiple risks the level is a good
measure for prioritizing their treatments.

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Characterizing the Risk
We identify risk through some properties
reported below:

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Risk Computation/Assessment
Elements used in risk computation:

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Risk Computation/Assessment

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Risk Computation/Assessment

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Problems of the analytical risk computation
It is difficult to obtain validity ranges for coefficients
from experimental data;
Risk coefficients should not be bound to any other
factor in the expression, since the worn protections
and the procedures in place should offer a constant
support to reduction of the risk for a person
independently of his distance from dangers.
The distance parameter could make risk values
oscillate out of the prescribed range. In fact even
short distances can increase the risk to very high
levels. Although conceptually correct, this could lead
to problems during the elaboration of risk formulas.

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To solve the problems…
The security coefficient has been separated from
the computation of the actual danger by
subtracting a numeric valued depending of the
protections used to prevent a damage caused by
the considered element.
The distance has been substituted by a Gaussian
coefficient dependent on both the distance from the
dangerous source and on the danger type, giving a
value between 0 and 1. Such value is multiplied with
the dangerousness Pr in order to smoothen its
contribute with the increase of the distance.

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The risk formula

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The risk formula in two dimensional space

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Moving from Risk to Safety
Safety: The condition of being safe; freedom from
danger, risk or injury.
• the absence of accidents that are events
involving an unplanned and unacceptable loss.
• Safety as low or acceptable risk.

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Risk Management vs. Safety Management
• Very similar concepts
• Safety management can be considered as
the subset of risk management.
• Risk refers to a broader concept that can
include: financial, reputation, legal,
business, and market share risks.

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Bow-tie Model
Bow-tie Model: Several hazards/threats can
cause a hazardous event which may have
consequences.

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Uncertainty models in Safety Management
• Uncertainty can apply at different levels:
– Uncertainty of input data
– Uncertainty of the risk assessment
model
– Uncertainty of output data
• Uncertainty plays an important part in
decision making specifically when it
comes to security and safety.

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Selected Publications
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, and Mahsa Teimourikia, George Hadjichristofi. "Web-Based
Cooperative Tool for Risk Treatment under Adaptive Security Rules." submitted for
publication at Special Issue on Semantic Web for Cooperation - Future Generation
Computer Systems, Elsevier Editor.
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, and Mahsa Teimourikia. "RAMIRES: Risk Adaptive Management
In Resilient Environments with Security" Submitted for publication in WETICE
Conference (WETICE), 2015 IEEE 24th International. IEEE, 2015.
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, and Mahsa Teimourikia. "Risks in smart environments and
adaptive access controls." Innovative Computing Technology (INTECH), 2014 Fourth
International Conference on. IEEE, 2014.
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, and Mahsa Teimourikia. "Access Control Privileges Management
for Risk Areas." Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management in
Mediterranean Countries. Springer International Publishing, 2014. 98-111.
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, George Hadjichristofi, and Mahsa Teimourikia. "Adaptive
Security for Risk Management Using Spatial Data." Database and Expert Systems
Applications. Springer International Publishing, 2014.
• Fugini, Mariagrazia, George Hadjichristofi, and Mahsa Teimourikia. "Dynamic
Security Modeling in Risk Management Using Environmental Knowledge." WETICE
Conference (WETICE), 2014 IEEE 23rd International. IEEE, 2014.

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Contact Information
• Drop an email to:
Mahsa.teimourikia@polimi.it
• View profile in:
Polimi Deib:
http://home.deib.polimi.it/teimourikia
 Office:
 Via Ponzio, Edificio 21, First Floor,
Office no. 19

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References
• [1] Bahr, Nicholas J. System safety engineering and risk assessment: a practical
approach. CRC Press, 2014.
• [2] Purdy, Grant. "ISO 31000: 2009—setting a new standard for risk
management."Risk analysis 30.6 (2010): 881-886.
• [3] Aven, Terje. "On the new ISO guide on risk management terminology."Reliability
engineering & System safety 96.7 (2011): 719-726.
• [4] Aven, Terje, et al. Uncertainty in Risk Assessment: The Representation and
Treatment of Uncertainties by Probabilistic and Non-probabilistic Methods. John
Wiley & Sons, 2013.
• [5] Rausand, Marvin. Risk assessment: Theory, methods, and applications. Vol. 115.
John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
• [6] Marhavilas, Pan-K., D. Koulouriotis, and V. Gemeni. "Risk analysis and assessment
methodologies in the work sites: on a review, classification and comparative study of
the scientific literature of the period 2000–2009." Journal of Loss Prevention in the
Process Industries 24.5 (2011): 477-523
• [7] Fugini, Mariagrazia, Claudia Raibulet, and Luigi Ubezio. "Risk assessment in
work environments: modeling and simulation." Concurrency and computation:
Practice and experience 24.18 (2012): 2381-2403.

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Thank You