اخلاق و اصول اساسی معیارهای پذیرش ریسک

Ethics are concerned with distinguishing between what actions are “right” and “wrong” and what values are “good” and “bad”, etc. and there is a long academic tradition in discussing ethics and ethical theories. Risk acceptance criteria, on the other hand, distinguish between levels of risks that are acceptable and levels that are intolerable. In some sense, one may say that risk acceptance criteria distinguishes between “good” and “bad” systems and activities with regards to the risk they expose the society or elements of a society to and there is thus an obvious link between ethics and risk acceptance criteria or to risk management at large. However, there are few references in the literature that explores this link, and in this paper, the ethical foundation of fundamental principles of risk acceptance criteria will be elaborated upon. This paper considers some important principles for establishing risk acceptance criteria for safety critical systems and activities. The various principles and the philosophies behind them might at first sight seem contradictory and exclusive, but it is demonstrated how they may coexist in one and the same regulatory regime; They may complement each other in order to achieve the overall safety objectives of society. Then, some brief considerations of the ethical foundations for the principles will be given and some relevant examples of actual risk acceptance criteria will be given from the maritime industries. However, it is believed that the principles and discussions are of general interest and apply to all areas of technical risk and to safety regulations in a broader perspective.

Nearly all activities in life involve risk in some way or another, and there are no universally agreed criteria for what levels of risk are acceptable. Identified and unidentified risks are always sought to be controlled and minimized. The most commonly used strategy for managing risk in the public interest is through legislation and regulation, although everyone is constantly voluntarily managing personal risk in daily life on an individual level, both consciously as well as unconsciously. Risk reduction will come at a price and there will be a trade-off between the level of risk one accepts and the cost one is willing to spend to mitigate it. For decision-makers responsible for public safety, at the expense of the public wealth, this trade-off needs to be considered carefully and thoroughly. Also the varying needs of different stakeholders must be balanced. The overall objective is to best allocate the society’s scarce resources for risk reduction, by supporting the implementation of efficient risk reduction measures and to avoid wasting efforts on inefficient ones. Risks introduced to the society from a given activity may be of different types. Fatality risks or health risks are the risk of depriving members of the community of their lives or their good health. Other types are property risk, economic risk and environmental risks. When decisions about safety are made, all risks should be considered, and appropriate acceptance criteria for fatality, health, environmental, economic and property risks should all be met before an activity can be declared safe enough (Jonkman et al., 2003). However, this paper focuses on safety risk. Safety is surely an important objective in society, but it is not the only one and allocation of resources on safety must be balanced with that of other societal needs. In the literature, different fundamental principles for appropriate risk acceptance criteria have been proposed (see e.g. Nathwani et al., 2009) and extensive research is continuously going on; new principles for establishing and evaluating criteria are continually being introduced. For example, in BRTF (2003), the following five principles for good regulation are established: Proportionality, Accountability, Consistency, Transparency and Targeting. Reference is also made to Aven (2003). As a consequence, new risk acceptance criteria are frequently proposed (see e.g. Moseman, 2011). Risk acceptance criteria will obviously depend on the legal framework of the society and different legal frameworks might yield different criteria (Hartford, 2009). A comparison of risk regulation in two European countries, the UK and the Netherlands, is presented in Ale (2005) and it is shown that even though the legal and historical context is different, the risk acceptance criteria and the levels of risk are very similar. At any rate, the establishment of various risk acceptance criteria is one approach for managing risk on behalf of the public, even though it is acknowledged that there have been expressed some objections to the use of risk acceptance criteria and that other alternatives exist (Aven and Vinnem, 2005 and Abrahamsen and Aven, 2008). However, Vinnem (2010) argues that risk acceptance criteria are superior to risk-informed decision making in some contexts, and also suggests that there should be regulations stating how risk acceptance criteria should be formulated. Meyer et al. (2007) also express the view that defining risk acceptance criteria is a good practice for risk management. Having adopted a set of fundamental principles to govern the establishment of risk acceptance criteria, specific risk acceptance criteria can be formulated. In this paper, some important principles for establishing risk acceptance criteria are presented and discussed. At first sight, some of these may seem exclusive but it will be demonstrated how the different principles can be employed to complement each other in one and the same regulatory regime. Brief considerations on the ethical foundations of the various principles will also be given and it is argued that there is a close link between ethics and risk management and also that it will be fruitful to make ethical considerations and reflections when establishing risk acceptance criteria. Ethical justification for the principles behind risk acceptance criteria may be found in both deontological and teleological ethics. However, it is out of scope to try to evaluate and compare the ethical position of different regulatory regimes, as discussed in Aven (2007). Some examples of actual risk acceptance criteria will be given from the maritime industries, but the principles and discussions are believed be general enough to apply to all areas of technical risk. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the ESREL 2011 conference (Vanem, 2011).

This paper has presented some general principles for setting risk acceptance criteria when managing risk from safety critical activities on behalf of the general public. It has also been shown that, although some of the principles may seem incompatible at first, they may actually be used to complement each other in one and the same regulatory framework. Furthermore, it is suggested that risk acceptance criteria, which are normative statements of what is deemed acceptable and what is not in a society, are intimately related to ethics, ethical theories and ethical values and norms. It is argued that the principles for establishing risk acceptance criteria, and thereby also the criteria themselves, should be based on ethical considerations and be justifiable by some ethical theory. In spite of the obvious link between ethics and risk management, is it demonstrated that there is no one-to-one correspondence between any ethical theory and principles adopted for establishing risk acceptance criteria. On the contrary, different ethical theories may be used as justification for one and the same principle and on the other hand, one and the same ethical theory can be used to justify contradicting risk acceptance criteria. Notwithstanding, it is argued that there are a close relationship between ethics and risk management, and ethical considerations related to principles for risk acceptance criteria will be meaningful. In particular, this is useful when criteria are subject to debate and should be communicated and justified towards the public. Finally, some examples of actual risk acceptance criteria from the maritime industries are given along with discussions on how they were derived. It is seen that these actual risk acceptance criteria can be justified based on the principles outlined in this paper, even in cases where they might have been decided upon without a conscious awareness of those principles or any ethical theory. It is noted that some of the risk acceptance criteria examples given herein, most notably those pertaining to environmental risk are still under debate at IMO level and elsewhere, and consensus remains to be reached.