The doctoral dissertations of the former Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) and Aalto University Schools of Technology (CHEM, ELEC, ENG, SCI) published in electronic format are available in the electronic publications archive of Aalto University - Aaltodoc.
Aalto

On the Use of Expert Judgement in the Qualification of Risk Assessment

Tony Rosqvist

Dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Technology to be presented with due permission for public examination and debate at Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland, in Auditorium E, Otakaari 1, Espoo, on the 11th of December, 2003, at 12 noon.

Overview in PDF format (ISBN 951-38-6244-5)   [215 KB]
VTT Publications 507, ISSN 1455-0849

Dissertation is also available in print (ISBN 951-38-6243-7)
Copyright © 2003 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
VTT Publications 507, ISSN 1235-0621
VTT-PUBS-507
TKK-DISS-1812

Abstract

The increased use of risk assesment in governmental and corporate decision-making has increased the role of expert judgement in providing information for safety related decision-making. Expert judgements are required in most steps of risk assessment: hazard identification, risk estimation, risk evaluation and analysis of options. The use and elicitation of expert judgement is therefore subject to on-going research. Furthermore, expert judgement is also required in the quality assurance or quality verification of risk assessment.

The research presented in the thesis addresses qualitative and probabilistic methods supporting the use of expert judgement in specific decision contexts; introduces a conceptual and procedural framework for quality verification of risk assessment; and presents techniques for the aggregation of probability distributions specified by experts' percentile information.

The methodological view to risk assessment adopted in the thesis is requisite modelling, where a decision and risk model is developed for a certain decision context to support decision-making under uncertainty, and refined until the decision-maker has confidence in the results and prescriptions obtained from the model.

The decision and risk modelling approaches presented in the thesis are related to specific decision contexts in maritime safety, maintenance management, and software reliability. The modelling approaches presented can, however, be utilised for risk-informed decision-making in other application areas as well.

This thesis consists of an overview and of the following 6 publications:

  1. Rosqvist, T., Tuominen, R. 2004. Qualification of Formal Safety Assessment - An Exploratory Study. Safety Science, 42(2), 99-120.
  2. Rosqvist, T., Nyman, T., Sonninen, S., Tuominen, R. 2002. The implementation of the VTMIS system for the gulf of Finland - a FSA study. Proceedings of the RINA International Conference on Formal Safety Assessment, 18-19 Sept 2002. London.
  3. Rosqvist, T. 2002. Stopping time optimisation in condition monitoring. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 76(3), 319-325.
  4. Rosqvist, T. 2000. Bayesian aggregation of experts' judgements on failure intensity. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 70(3), 283-289.
  5. Rosqvist, T. 2004. Stakeholder compensation model based on decision analysis. Journal of Multi-criteria Decision Analysis - Special Issue: Towards electronic democracy (in press).
  6. Rosqvist, T., Koskela, M., Harju, H. 2003. Software quality evaluation based on expert judgement. Software Quality Journal, 11(1), 39-55.

Keywords: risk assessment, quality of risk assessment, qualification of risk assessment, expert judgement, expert model, probabilistic safety assessment, formal safety assessment, risk modelling

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© 2003 Helsinki University of Technology

Last update 2011-05-26