Anticipating objections to risk assessments is paramount to foster social licence to operate (SLO) and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The first step is to avoid any suspicion of conflict of interest. To achieve this, risk assessments should be performed by an independent entity.
Today, we discuss how to help rectify possible objections and ultimately foster SLO and CSR by applying a mix of technical and soft concepts and skills.
Always Define the Success Metric and the Glossary
The success metric and glossary need clear definitions in order to avoid confusion from the onset. For example, if a dam “survives” a given hazard, but the water source for the local population is contaminated, does this constitute a tailings dam failure? Too often, it is only when a dam is breached that it is considered to have failed. Other times, engineers looked only at the stability, disregarding other issues, forgetting the system’s success metric.
This became evident in the case of the 2017 Oroville dam failure. The 2018 Independent Forensic Team Report Oroville Dam Spillway Analysis stated that “most [California Department of Water Resources] staff and those involved in the Potential Failure Modes Analysis (PFMA) studies considered the use of the emergency spillway in terms of only an “extreme” flood event. The Independent Forensic Team notes that a “1 in 100” year storm might be considered an “extreme” event in an operational sense. However, from a dam safety viewpoint, an “extreme” dam safety would be a much larger storm.” This is an example of unclear definitions which lead to misleading evaluation of risks.
As a second example, in North Carolina in 2014, the collapse of an old drainage pipe under a 27-acre ash waste pond released about 82,000 short tons (74,400 t) of toxic coal ash and 27 million gallons [100,000 m3] of contaminated water into the Dan River. Many risk assessments focus on the dam and overlook other potential points of failure like pipes, underground cavities and other ancillary facilities. The results of such failure studies are misleading and unrealistic at best.
Clearly State Types of Consequence and How They Interact
In 2013, we stated that: “especially for very large projects, risk assessments generally consider overly simplistic consequences and ignore “indirect/life-changing” effects on population and other social aspects”. We noted that simplistic consequences significantly affect SLO and CSR.
Using conceptually sound risk assessment methodologies allows us to consider the uncertainties surrounding failure parameters and related consequences.
The usual dimensions of consequence we include in Optimum Risk Estimates are:
- extent of damage (as expressed in fatalities, business interruption, etc.)
- geographic range of damage
- duration of the damage
- reversibility of the damage
- latency between an accident and the occurrence of its damages
- human health and safety
- fish, fauna and topsoil/vegetation
- long-term economic and development
- social impacts (inequity/injustice, psychological stress and discomfort, conflicts and mobilization, spillover effects)
Closing Remarks
By anticipating objections to risk assessments, proponents of a project can foster SLO and CSR within the project’s community. Risk assessments performed by neutral third parties, clear definitions, and a detailed understanding of the consequences associated with risk can strengthen societal and corporate risk tolerance.
