Pragmatic risk management with RiskPlan online

Bild: Kecko

24.07.08 - Ernst Basler + Partner displays the impact of mutations and compares them with the actual situation.

The storms of August 2005 and June 2007 in Switzerland showed that the population and their livelihoods are exposed to natural hazards and that the existence of human beings is threatened.

A 100% safety from natural hazards remains an illusion. Nature is incalculable and technically not everything is possible. Foremost public funds are too short to cover the demand on maximal security. Thus the security planning and the question "Which level of security is available for which price?" get a particular and increasing significance.

In order to encourage risk based planning and decision making as well as the understanding of the necessity of a "risk dialog", the Federal Office of Civil Protection and the Federal Office for the Environment developed together with Ernst Basler + Partner Ltd. and GRSoft GmbH the online application RiskPlan – Pragmatic risk management.

RiskPlan allows a participative and pragmatic risk- and measure-estimation. The application allows particularly to display the impact of mutations (for example after the building of new protection measures or considering climate changes) and to compare them with the actual situation.

"Pragmatic" means that the knowledge of local experts and of the involved parts is included the risk management of a region, in addition to existing analyses. With this method, if the information about the hazards is inexistent or limited, the responsible parties still have the possibility of doing best possible estimations about the risk situation through the local knowledge and in the form of a risk dialogue.

The region oriented estimation of risks can be carried out in the natural hazards-, technical- and social-ambit.

RiskPlan offers a wide range of possible applications:

• Planning instrument for integral risk management
• Support for concrete risk estimations with different accuracy levels
• Decision support for the optimal choice of protective measures.
• Instrument for the risk dialogue and communication
• Learning aid to deal with global warming and its effects.
• RiskPlan is a learing instrument for students in the practice of integral risk management.

Ernst Basler + Partner Ltd. provided the following services:

• Technical and methodical consulting as well as quality control.
• Development of the fundamental methodology and application
• Demonstration of the mathematical arguments of the risk analysis and risk estimation.

RiskPlan aims to the regional responsible in charge of the risk management, to experts of engineering- and insurance companies, as well as to students and teachers of universities, technical institutes and colleges.