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Category: Conferences

Published on Leave a comment on reflections on public health risk analysis from World Congress on Risk plenary lunch

Today's plenary lunch included two interesting, high-level talks on several different dimensions of public health risk. While MacIntyre was focused on bioterrorism, Flahault was more wide ranging, with a general vision for changes in public health systems.

I have been fascinated on my international travels the last few weeks on the diversity of approaches to risk internationally. While you should by no means generalize from my remarks, it seems like there are a couple camps that focus on behavior modification and regulation, while others focus on the role of individual agents as key proponents in hazard exposures. In addition, engineers approach problems quite differently from basic scientists and they from social scientists and government agents. Of course there is much overlap. As a result, the foci in the technical presentations can vary quite widely.

I would say that engineers and basic scientists use scenario based approaches such as PRA, fault trees, and influence diagrams in their studies; more social science inclined professionals focus on the role of institutions in risk management and framing. Although we speak the same language at 30000 feet, the diversity in the details is truly fascinating.

My pressing question is How do we get folks involved in this earlier in life? How do we discuss the world of risk in a way that kids and young adults see the drama involved in finding out dangers and uncertainties germane to modern and global life?

Published on Leave a comment on New SEED Group Paper Presented at PSAM11/ESREL12 in Helsinki, Finland on 27 June 2012

A recent SEED Group paper, "Bayesian Belief Networks for Predicting Drinking Water Distribution System Pipe Breaks" was presented at PSAM11/ESREL12 in Helsinki, Finland.  This peer-reviewed conference paper was co-authored by Dr. Francis with JHU collaborators Dr. Seth Guikema and Lucas Henneman.  The abstract of this paper follows:

In this project, we use Bayesian Belief Networks (BBNs) to construct a knowledge model for pipe breaks in a water zone.  BBN modeling is a critical step towards real-time distribution system management.  Development of expert systems for analyzing real-time data is not only important for pipe break prediction, but is also a first step in preventing water loss and water quality deterioration through the application of machine learning techniques to facilitate real-time distribution system monitoring and management.  Our model will be based on pipe breaks and covariate data from a mid-Atlantic United States (U.S.) drinking water distribution system network. The expert model is learned using a conditional independence test method, a score-based method, and a hybrid method, then subjected to 10-fold cross validation based on log-likelihood scores.

A short report from PSAM11/ESREL12 will follow in a later post.

Published on Leave a comment on Short Report from #SRA2011

The SEED group is actively involved in the Society for Risk Analysis, and we take this opportunity to list a few brief highlights from this year’s meeting:

  1. A paper by Dr. Francis and collaborators was presented in the preference elicitation and benefits assessment symposium.  The abstract is provided below.
  2. Dr. Francis began serving as the Chair of the Engineering and Infrastructure Specialty Group of the SRA.  EISG will be emphasizing linkages with other specialty groups, while also increasing our presence in the Risk Analysis journal.
  3. Expert elicitation and evidence synthesis were big topics this year, and Drs. Francis and Gray will be hoping to build on this interest within the SRA by applying innovative evidence synthesis techniques to chemical risk assessment problems.
  4. The plenary sessions this year were excellent, including a discussion of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill by Admiral Thad Allen, and a tribute to Carnegie Mellon’s Lester Lave.  Look out for class material from both of these knowledge bases to appear in Dr. Francis’s future courses
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