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Uses of Risk Analysis to Achieve Balanced Safety in Building Design and Operations (1991)

Chapter: Appendix D: Probablistic Risk Assessment

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Probablistic Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 1991. Uses of Risk Analysis to Achieve Balanced Safety in Building Design and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1907.
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APPENDIX D
PROBABILISTIC RISK ASSESSMENT42

The term Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) refers to the framework and analytical methods widely used for assessing risk in the U.S. nuclear power industries. PRA utilizes event trees and fault trees in a structured analysis process that can be described in five general steps:

  1. Identifying various hazards and the frequency of various levels of each hazard (initiating event).

  2. Identifying the things that could fail or go wrong and their probability, given the various hazards and hazard levels, including the consequential damage associated with each failure. This step involve the development of all of the scenarios of events that could occur, and their sequence and resultant damage. (The event tree is a tool for this.)

  3. Developing the model for each event in the sequences to indicate which of the event's component parts could fail and lead to failure or degradation of the event. (The fault tree is a tool for this.)

  4. Quantifying the fault trees and event trees to determine the frequency of each damage state, and thereby determining the ranked order of scenario and the component contributors to the different damage state's frequency.

42  

This explanation was provided by one of the peer reviewers of the committee's draft report.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Probablistic Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 1991. Uses of Risk Analysis to Achieve Balanced Safety in Building Design and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1907.
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  1. Determining the uncertainty in the results by calculating a distribution of damage state frequency, using the distribution of possible hazard frequency and failure probability.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Probablistic Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 1991. Uses of Risk Analysis to Achieve Balanced Safety in Building Design and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1907.
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Page 63
Suggested Citation:"Appendix D: Probablistic Risk Assessment." National Research Council. 1991. Uses of Risk Analysis to Achieve Balanced Safety in Building Design and Operations. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/1907.
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Page 64
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This volume considers engineering risk analysis applications to the field of building safety. Building codes and design criteria used by architects and engineers—standards of good practice defined by industry consensus—have made great strides in bringing the dangers of facilities under control, but the range of hazards (e.g., fire, indoor air pollutants, electrical malfunctions) is broad. Risk analysis offers improved overall safety of new and existing facilities without imposing unacceptable costs.

Broad application of risk analysis will help facility professionals, policymakers, and facility users and owners to understand the risks, to determine what levels of risk are socially and economically tolerable, and to manage risk more effectively.

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