Applying Risk Analysis Methods to University Systems W R
Chisnall The words "Risk Analysis" are used today in several
different contexts. In safety critical situations such as the
design and operation of nuclear power plants or oil and gas
rigs, risk analysis is part of the process of making the chance
of a disaster as small as possible. The same thinking applies to
the design of aircraft blind landing systems and modern "fly-by-
wire" avionics. In these cases the consequences of an accident
are so horrendous, and therefore costly, that the chance of one
happening must be made almost vanishingly small. The problem is
to build a system where components are replicated and human
actions are checked so that overall the system will meet its
reliability targets. If, on the other hand, you are a manager on
a civil engineering or software development project you will
want to know how the actual cost and time to completion of your
project might differ from the nominal values. Large projects are
composed of hundreds or