RISKS IN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE

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RISKS IN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCEPRECAUTIONARY
PRINCIPLE

• Balaji, Artur and Jonas

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Definition of Risk

• Risk emergences from a combination of probability
  of occurrence and consequence.
• The severity of the risk is judged by its nature
  and possible consequences.
• William D. Rowe says a Risk is acceptable when
  those affected are generally no longer
  apprehensive about it.

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Uncertainties in Design

• Risk will be seldom in a product. It arises
  because of many uncertainties faced by the design
  engineer, also the manufacturing engineer and
  finally even by the sales and application manager
• Coming to applications design that do quite well
  under static loads may fail under dynamic loads.
  A very famous example is the wooden bridge
  collapsed when a contingent of Napoleons army
  crossed it marching in step. The same even
  affected to one of the Robert Stephensons steel
  bridges. The bridges shook when the British
  troops make their march.
•  A product is said to be safe if its capability
  exceeds its duty. Actually the stress that
  materializes at the load varies quite a large
  when compared with the stress calculated by the
  engineer for a given condition of load 

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Methods of Testing

• There are different approaches called as scenario
  analysis, failure mode analysis, effect analysis,
  fault tree analysis.
• In scenario analysis one starts from a given
  event, then we have to study the different
  consequences that evolve from it.
• In failure modes and effect analysis,
  systemically we examine the modes of each
  component with out however focusing on causes or
  relation ships among the elements of complex
  systems.
• Fault tree analysis method in which one poses a
  system failure and then traces the events back to
  possible causes at the component level. Now we
  have a final method called as event tree method,
  which is the reverse of fault tree method, and it
  is the more mathematically oriented version of
  scenario analysis.

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Testing For Safety

• We can gain experience only through tests.
• Now a days engineers test an entire airframe for
  fatigue, often one of the first production
  models.
• We cannot trust testing procedures uncertainly.
• The pressure from the management to fudge data
  for now, because by the time we get into
  production we will have ignored out of the
  problem.
• So the conscientious engineers had therefore
  better made occasional spot checks on their own
  unless the organization they work for uses an
  independent testing service free of production
  pressures.

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Risk-Benefit Analysis And Risk Reduction

• Many big projects are generally justified by on
  the basis of a risk benefit analysis. When we
  examine risk benefit analysis in a close manner
  it reveals many difficulties.
• It is clear that both risks and benefits lie in
  the future. Since there is some uncertainty, so
  we should multiply the magnitude of the potential
  loss by the probability of its occurrence,
  similarly with the gain.
• The matter of delayed effects presents
  particular difficulties when an analysis is
  carried out
• It should be noticed that risk-benefit analysis
  is just like cost-benefit analysis, it is
  concerned with the advisability of undertaking a
  project.
• So the engineers must be aware of differences so
  that they do not unknowingly carry the
  assumptions behind one kind of concern into their
  deliberations over the other.

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The Precautionary Principle

• A new principle for guiding human activities, to
  prevent harm to the Environment and to human
  health, has been emerging during the past 10
  years. It is called the "principle of
  precautionary action" or the "precautionary
  principle" for short.
• http//www.sdearthtimes.com/et0398/et0398s4.html

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The Principles of Precautionary Action

• People have a duty to take anticipatory action to
  prevent harm. (As one participant at the
  Wingspread meeting summarized the essence of the
  precautionary principle, "If you have a
  reasonable suspicion that something bad might be
  going to happen, you have an obligation to try to
  stop it.")
• The burden of proof of harmlessness of a new
  technology, process, activity, or chemical lies
  with the proponents, not with the general public.
  
• Before using a new technology, process, or
  chemical, or starting a new activity, people have
  an obligation to examine "a full range of
  alternatives" including the alternative of doing
  nothing.
• Decisions applying the precautionary principle
  must be "open, informed, and democratic" and
  "must include affected parties."

http//www.sdearthtimes.com/et0398/et0398s4.html
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Case study 1 Air Bags

• SafeComp is a company that, among other things,
  designs and makes sensing devices for automobile
  air bags. Bob Baines was hired to work in the
  quality control department. About six weeks after
  starting work, he was asked to sign off on a
  design that he felt very uncertain about. He
  checked with people involved in the design and
  found the situation, at best, ambiguous.
•  
• Bob told his manager that he would not feel
  right about signing off, and, since he was
  relatively inexperienced with SafeComp's
  procedures, asked that he not be required to do
  this. His manager kept applying pressure.
  Eventually, Bob decided that he wished neither to
  violate his principles by doing something that he
  thought was wrong, nor to become involved in a
  battle in which his career would certainly be
  major casualty. Bob quietly resigned.

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Case study 2 Making Good Wafers Look Bad

• Don Fisher, an electrical engineer, worked for
  Dicers, a company that purchased wafers for
  microprocessor chips from another company and
  then diced, packaged, and sold them. Don was
  assigned the task of testing these wafers. After
  a while, he was instructed by his manager to
  alter the testing process in such a manner that
  the quality of the purchased wafers was made to
  seem lower than it really was, which had the
  effect of the lowering the price paid. Don
  objected to this practice and refused to go
  along. Eventually he was discharged.

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Case study 3 Not Lighting Up

• Will Morgan, a licensed electrical engineer,
  worked for a state university on construction and
  renovation projects. His immediate manager was an
  architect, and next in the chain of command was
  an administrator, John Tight, a man with no
  technical background. Tight, without talking to
  the engineers, often produced estimates on
  project costs that he passed on to higher
  university officials. In those cases, not
  infrequent, where it became evident that actual
  costs were going to exceed his estimates, he
  would pressure the engineers to cut corners.
• One such occasion involved the renovation of a
  warehouse to convert some storage space into
  office space. Among the specifications detailed
  by Morgan was the installation of emergency exit
  lights. These were mandated by the building code.
  As part of his effort to bring the actual costs
  closer to his unrealistic estimate, Tight
  insisted that the specification for emergency
  lights be deleted.
• Will strongly objected on obvious grounds. When
  he refused to yield, Tight brought charges
  against him, claiming that he was a disruptive
  influence. Although his immediate superior, the
  architect, did not support these charges, he did
  not fight for Morgan, who was ultimately
  dismissed by the university. Morgan is now suing
  for wrongful discharge.
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