Perspectives on risk: review and discussion of the basis for establishing a unified and holistic approach

There exist many perspectives on risk, including safety engineering, social scientist perspectives, risk perception research and economic decision analysis. Traditionally, some of the different perspectives have been viewed to represent completely different frameworks, and the exchange of ideas and results has been difficult. Much of the existing discussions on risk perspectives have in our view lacked a sufficient level of precision on the fundamental ideas of risk assessments and management. For example, there is more than one line of thinking in risk analysis and assessment and mixing all approaches into one, gives a rather meaningless discussion. In this paper, we review some of the most common perspectives on risk. We show that it is possible to establish a common basis for the different perspectives, by looking at risk as the full spectrum of the dimensions (a) possible consequences and (b) associated uncertainties. Examples from the offshore oil and gas industry are included to illustrate ideas.