Offshore Risk Assessment is the first book to deal with quantified risk assessment (QRA) as applied specifically to offshore installations and operations. Risk assessment techniques have been used for some years in the offshore oil and gas industry, and their use is set to expand increasingly as the industry moves into new areas and faces new challenges in older regions. The book starts with a thorough discussion of risk analysis methodology. Subsequent chapters are devoted to analytical approaches to escalation, escape, evacuation and rescue analysis of safety and emergency systems. Separate chapters analyze the main hazards of offshore structures: Fire, explosion, collision and falling objects. Risk mitigation and control are then discussed, followed by an outline of an alternative approach to risk modelling that focuses especially on the risk of short-duration activities. Not only does the book describe the state of the art of QRA, it also identifies weaknesses and areas that need development. Readership: Besides being a comprehensive reference for academics and students of marine/offshore risk assessment and management, the book should also be owned by professionals in the industry, contractors, suppliers, consultants and regulatory authorities.

In the e-business economy, managers are faced with too much data and too little meaningful information about markets, customers, products, company operations and finances. Their greatest challenge is to identify, manage and use the right information to compete. Information management is too important to a company’s performance and growth to be delegated primarily to IT, information or financial specialists. This book is based on the idea that information management is the responsibility of every manager. Managers may not be IT specialists, but they must create the conditions for effective information use that creates real business value. Donald Marchand and his colleagues at IMD invite you to learn your information responsibilities, so your company can use information faster, better and smarter than the competition. By using the business framework of ‘strategic information alignment,’ this book shows how information can create business value through delighting customers, being more innovative, managing risks and being the low-cost leader in your markets and industries. Learn the why, what and how of better information use and management in your company. At last, here is a book about managing information written specifically for business managers. Developed from the executive teaching, consulting and real world research of a team of faculty who work with the world’s leading global companies every day, this book provides managers with the mindset and guidance to leverage the company’s capabilities to use and manage information to create business value.

One of the greatest challenges facing those concerned with health and environmental risks is how to carry on a useful public dialogue on these subjects. In a democracy, it is the public that ultimately makes the key decisions on how these risks will be controlled. The stakes are too high for us not to do our very best. The importance of this subject is what led the Task Force on Environmental Cancer and Heart and Lung Disease to establish an Interagency Group on Public Education and Communication. This volume captures the essence of the "Workshop on the Role of Government in Health Risk Communication and Public Education" held in January 1987. It also includes some valuable appendixes with practical guides to risk communication. As such, it is an important building block in the effort to improve our collective ability to carry on this critical public dialogue. Lee M. Thomas Administrator, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Chairman, The Task Force on Environmental Cancer and Heart and Lung Disease Preface The Task Force on Environmental Cancer and Heart and Lung Disease is an interagency group established by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1977 (P.L. 95-95). Congress mandated the Task Force to recommend research to determine the relationship between environmental pollutants and human disease and to recommend research aimed at reduc ing the incidence of environment-related disease. The Task Force's Project Group on Public Education and Communication focuses on education as a means of reducing or preventing disease."

This book proposes a conception of the corporate strategy making process that recognizes the individual strategy maker as a center-stage corporate actor. This individual-centered view of the stategy making process is needed in order to better understand the interplay between objective factors and the subjective perceptions and values of strategy makers. Using a large sample of executives working in two of the ten largest U.S. commercial banks, Das examines empirically the dynamics of two critical aspects of the role of individual strategy makers: future orientation and perceptions of the strategic planning milieu. He discusses the various implications of his findings for further research into the strategy making process. The author demonstrates the utility of individual future orientation in understanding how strategy makers influence the character of the eventual corporate strategy. The results of Das' study help to explain why long-range planning is really more short-range than anyone cares to admit.

Business modelling is a vast arena of research and practice, which is gaining increasing important in the rapid development of e-commerce, globalization, and in particular, the movement toward global e-business. The ability to utilize advanced computing technology to model, analyse and simulate various aspects of ever-changing businesses has made a significant impact on the way businesses are designed and run these days. With the current global e-business and e-commerce initiatives, it has become important that all businesses carefully validate their business objectives, requirements, and strategies through a careful process of formal business modelling. It is important for effective enterprise decision making to have clear, concise business models that allow the extraction of critical value from business processes and specify the rules to be globally enforced. Particularly in e-business specifications, the need to be unambiguous, accurate, and complete becomes even greater, because there may be no human mediator or agent to rely on in complex or unforeseen situations. Business Modelling: Multidisciplinary Approaches - Economics, Operational, and Information Systems Perspectives, arranged in three parts, brings scholarly perspectives from various disciplines to bear on some of the critical aspects of business modeling. The first part (chapters 1-8) focuses on business modelling fundamentals and starts with a series of economics and operations research perspectives. The second part (chapters 9-19) concentrates on modelling in electronic businesses and focuses on Management Information Systems and Decision Support Systems. The third part (chapters 20-22) centers on multidisciplinary business modelling progress, in particular on the seminal work of Professor Andrew B. Whinston.

Decision Theory and Decision Analysis: Trends and Challenges is divided into three parts. The first part, overviews, provides state-of-the-art surveys of various aspects of decision analysis and utility theory. The second part, theory and foundations, includes theoretical contributions on decision-making under uncertainty, partial beliefs and preferences. The third section, applications, reflects the real possibilities of recent theoretical developments such as non-expected utility theories, multicriteria decision techniques, and how these improve our understanding of other areas including artificial intelligence, economics, and environmental studies.

Multicriterion Decision in Management: Principles and Practice is the first multicriterion analysis book devoted exclusively to discrete multicriterion decision making. Typically, multicriterion analysis is used in two distinct frameworks: Firstly, there is multiple criteria linear programming, which is an extension of the results of linear programming and its associated algorithms. Secondly, there is discrete multicriterion decision making, which is concerned with choices among a finite number of possible alternatives such as projects, investments, decisions, etc. This is the focus of this book. The book concentrates on the basic principles in the domain of discrete multicriterion analysis, and examines each of these principles in terms of their properties and their implications. In multicriterion decision analysis, any optimum in the strict sense of the term does not exist. Rather, multicriterion decision making utilizes tools, methods, and thinking to examine several solutions, each having their advantages and disadvantages, depending on one's point of view. Actually, various methods exist for reaching a good choice in a multicriterion setting and even a complete ranking of the alternatives. The book describes and compares these methods, so-called aggregation methods', with their advantages and their shortcomings. Clearly, organizations are becoming more complex, and it is becoming harder and harder to disregard complexity of points of view, motivations, and objectives. The day of the single objective (profit, social environment, etc. ) is over and the wishes of all those involved in all their diversity must be taken into account. To do this, a basic knowledge of multicriteriondecision analysis is necessary. The objective of this book is to supply that knowledge and enable it to be applied. The book is intended for use by practitioners (managers, consultants), researchers, and students in engineering and business.

This volume is intended to stimulate a change in the practice of decision support, advocating an interdisciplinary approach centred on both social and natural sciences, both theory and practice. It addresses the issue of analysis and management of uncertainty and risk in decision support corresponding to the aims of Integrated Assessment. A pluralistic method is necessary to account for legitimate plural interpretations of uncertainty and multiple risk perceptions. A wide range of methods and tools is presented to contribute to adequate and effective pluralistic uncertainty management and risk analysis in decision support endeavours. Special attention is given to the development of one such approach, the Pluralistic fRamework for Integrated uncertainty Management and risk Analysis (PRIMA), of which the practical value is explored in the context of the Environmental Outlooks produced by the Dutch Institute for Public Health and Environment (RIVM). Audience: This book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners whose work involves decision support, uncertainty management, risk analysis, environmental planning, and Integrated Assessment.

The successful first edition provided an introduction to the valuation and risk management of modern financial instruments, formulated in a precise mathematical expression and comprehensively covering all relevant topics using consistent and exact notation. In this edition, Deutsch continues with this philosophy covering new and more advanced topics including risk adjusted performance and portfolio optimization. This edition also includes a CD-ROM in the form of Excel workbooks giving detailed models of the concepts discussed in the book.

This book grew out of the conviction that the preparation and management of large-scale technological projects can be substantially improved. We have witnessed the often unhappy course of societal and political decision making concerning projects such as hazardous chemical installations, novel types of electric power plant or storage sites for solid wastes. This has led us to believe that probabilistic risk analysis, technical reliability analysis and environm, ental impact analysis are necessary but insufficient for making acceptable, and justifiable, social decisions about such projects. There is more to socio-technical decision making than applying acceptance rules based on neglige ably low accident probabilities or on maximum credible accidents. Consideration must also be given to psychological, social and political issues and methods of decision making. Our conviction initially gave rise to an international experts' workshop titled 'Social decision methodology for technological projects' (SDMTP) and held in May 1986 at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, at a time when Cvetkovich spent a sabbatical there. The work shop - aimed at surveying the issues and listing the methods to address them - was the first part of an effort whose second part was directed at the production of this volume. Plans called for the book to deal systematically with the main problems of socio-technical decision making; it was to list a number of useful approaches and methods; and it was to present a number of integrative conclusions and recommendations for both policy makers and methodologists."

Recent democratization and the accompanied liberalization of the media in Central and Eastern Europe has brought the devastating environmental impacts of the intensive and careless industrialization of the last 40 years to the surface. Less is known, however, about the social, political and institutional background of environmental risk management which led to the present situation, as well as about recent changes. Environment and Democratic Transition: Policy and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe provides an overview of the mechanism of policy making, the role of the scientific community, the environmental movements, and the public in risk controversies in Central and Eastern Europe from the 1970s until 1991. The book brings together studies by leading social scientists from the East and the West who investigate the economic, legal, institutional, behavioral, social and political aspects of environmental policy. In addition to analyzing past histories, most contributions focus also on challenges, pitfalls and dilemmas that the region's policy makers and environmentalists must face during the period of transition and into the future.

Economists, decision analysts, management scientists, and others have long argued that government should take a more scientific approach to decision making. Pointing to various theories for prescribing and rational izing choices, they have maintained that social goals could be achieved more effectively and at lower costs if government decisions were routinely subjected to analysis. Now, government policy makers are putting decision science to the test. Recent government actions encourage and in some cases require government decisions to be evaluated using formally defined principles 01' rationality. Will decision science pass tbis test? The answer depends on whether analysts can quickly and successfully translate their theories into practical approaches and whether these approaches promote the solution of the complex, highly uncertain, and politically sensitive problems that are of greatest concern to government decision makers. The future of decision science, perhaps even the nation's well-being, depends on the outcome. A major difficulty for the analysts who are being called upon by government to apply decision-aiding approaches is that decision science has not yet evolved a universally accepted methodology for analyzing social decisions involving risk. Numerous approaches have been proposed, including variations of cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, and applied social welfare theory. Each of these, however, has its limitations and deficiencies and none has a proven track record for application to govern ment decisions involving risk. Cost-benefit approaches have been exten sively applied by the government, but most applications have been for decisions that were largely risk-free."

At this time when regulatory agencies are accepting and actively encouraging probabilistic approaches and the attribution of overall uncertainty among inputs to support Value of Information analyses, a comprehensive sourcebook on methods for addressing variability and uncertainty in exposure analysis is sorely needed. This need is adroitly met in Probabilistic Techniques in Exposure Assessment. A host of expert contributors provide a straightforward introduction to the practical tools for addressing variability and uncertainty in support of environmental and human health decision making. 151 graphs, plots, charts, and figures supplement a broad range of detailed and practical examples.

The motivation for this monograph can be traced to a seminar on Simple Games given by Professor S.H. Tijs of the Catholic University at Nijmegen way back in 1981 or 1982 at the Delhi campus of the Indian Statistical Institute. As an ap plied statistician and a consultant in quality control, I was naturally interested in Reliability Theory. I was aquainted with topics in reliability like coherent systems, importance of components etc., mainly through Barlow and Proschan's book. At the seminar given by Professor Tijs, I noticed the striking similarity between the concepts in reliability and simple games and this kindled my interest in simple games. When I started going deep into the literature of simple games, I noticed that a number of concepts as well as results which were well known in game theory were rediscovered much later by researchers in reliability. Though the conceptual equivalence of coherent structures and simple games has been noticed quite early, it is not that much well known. In fact, the theoretical developments have taken place practically independent of each other, with considerable duplication of research effort. The basic objective of this monograph is to unify some of the concepts and developments in reliability and simple games so as to avoid further duplication."

The book focuses on applications of belief functions to business decisions. Section I introduces the intuitive, conceptual and historical development of belief functions. Three different interpretations (the marginally correct approximation, the qualitative model, and the quantitative model) of belief functions are investigated, and rough set theory and structured query language (SQL) are used to express belief function semantics. Section II presents applications of belief functions in information systems and auditing. Included are discussions on how a belief-function framework provides a more efficient and effective audit methodology and also the appropriateness of belief functions to represent uncertainties in audit evidence. The third section deals with applications of belief functions to mergers and acquisitions; financial analysis of engineering enterprises; forecast demand for mobile satellite services; modeling financial portfolios; and economics.

One of the most important tasks faced by decision-makers in business and government is that of selection. Selection problems are challenging in that they require the balancing of multiple, often conflicting, criteria. In recent years, a number of interesting decision aids have become available to assist in such decisions.
The aim of this book is to provide a comparative survey of many of the decision aids currently available. The first chapters present general ideas which underpin the methodologies used to design these aids. Subsequent chapters then focus on specific decision aids and demonstrate some of the software which implement these ideas. A final chapter provides a comparative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.

Multiple criteria decision-making research has developed rapidly and has become a main area of research for dealing with complex decision problems which require the consideration of multiple objectives or criteria. Over the past twenty years, numerous multiple criterion decision methods have been developed which are able to solve such problems. However, the selection of an appropriate method to solve a particular decision problem is today's problem for a decision support researcher and decision-maker. Intelligent Strategies for Meta Multiple Criteria Decision-Making deals centrally with the problem of the numerous MCDM methods that can be applied to a decision problem. The book refers to this as a meta decision problem', and it is this problem that the book analyzes. The author provides two strategies to help the decision-makers select and design an appropriate approach to a complex decision problem. Either of these strategies can be designed into a decision support system itself. One strategy is to use machine learning to design an MCDM method. This is accomplished by applying intelligent techniques, namely neural networks as a structure for approximating functions and evolutionary algorithms as universal learning methods. The other strategy is based on solving the meta decision problem interactively by selecting or designing a method suitable to the specific problem, for example, the constructing of a method from building blocks. This strategy leads to a concept of MCDM networks. Examples of this approach for a decision support system explain the possibilities of applying the elaborated techniques and their mutual interplay. The techniques outlined in the book can be used by researchers, students, and industry practitioners to better model and select appropriate methods for solving complex, multi-objective decision problems.

Quantified Societal Risk and Policy Making is the result of an international workshop on societal risk organized by the Dutch Ministry for Transport, Public Works and Water Management with additional financial support from the Directorate for Transportation (DG VII) of the European Union. Managing risks, whether there is a strong man-made or natural component, basically means assessing alternative options under uncertainty. The possibility of multiple fatalities is one of the factors that can vary between options. This volume is concerned with one particular type of risk - the risk of death of a number of people in one accident - and with one particular tool - probabilistic risk analysis - as they are developing in various domains of society nowadays. Generally, this risk is labelled societal risk. This book shows how such comparisons are shaped at present in various hazard domains, such as: flood protection location and physical planning of industry transportation of chemicals, and prevention of aircraft accidents. It examines how to represent aggregate risks from major hazards in ways that can be handled by policy-makers. The purpose of the book is to increase the awareness of societal risk, disseminate available knowledge of existing approaches, and exchange information on applications from various domains. Quantified Societal Risk and Policy Making should be of interest to all those professionally concerned with defining the optimal separation between hazardous activities and equally desirable developments nearby.

It's not what we know, but how we learn. This is the key that Learning to Read the Signs uses in order to evaluate and apply ideas and facts to one's organization life. The book asks the reader to go back to and reclaim pragmatism: an activity of thought involving four parts: Investigation, Hypothesis, Action, and Testing. Pragmatism is a method of interpretation or inquiry which offers to the thoughtful business practitioner a way to better understand the reality in which we operate, to think critically and creatively, and for business people to think together to make the best use of all our perspectives and talents. Questions raised in this book include: What are the signs telling us? Where are we headed and why? Why are things going the way they are? What is our purpose?

There is today a wide range of pubLications avaiLabLe on the theory of reLiabiLity and the technique of ProbabiListic Safety AnaLysis (PSA). To pLace this work properLy in this context, we must recaLL a basic concept underLying both theory and technique, that of redundancy. ReLiabiLity is something which can be designed into a system, by the introduction of redundancy at appropriate points. John Von Neumann's historic paper of 1952 'ProbabiListic Logics and the Synthesis of ReLiabLe Organisms from UnreLiabLe Components" has served as inspiration for aLL subsequent work on systems reLiabiLity. This paper sings the praises of redundancy as a means of designing reLiabiLity into systems, or, to use Von Neumann's words, of minimising error. Redundancy, then, is a fundamentaL characteristic which a designer seeks to buiLd in by using appropriate structuraL characteristics of the 'modeL" or representation which he uses for his work. But any modeL is estabLished through a process of de Limination and decomposition. FirstLy, a "Universe of Discourse" is delineated; its component eLements are then separated out; and moreover in a probabiListic framework for each eLement each possibLe state is defined and assigned an appropriate possibiLity measure caLLed probability.

1 AUK ISMAIL-ZADEH ,2, TOM BEER3 1 International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Warshavskoye shosse 79-2, Moscow 113556, Russia; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Geophysikalisches Institut, Universittit Karlsruhe, Hertzstr. 16, Karlsruhe 76187, Germany; e-mail: [email protected] 3 CSIRO Environmental Risk Network, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Vic. 3195 Australia; e-mail: [email protected] The world faces major threats to the sustainability of our planet. These threats are accompanied by the immediate dangers of natural and man-made disasters. Our vulnerability to them is greatly magnified with each passing year undermining our ability to maintain a sustainable and productive world into the 21st Century and beyond. Both history and common sense teach us that science has a tremendous potential to find ways to cope with these threats. 1 The EUROSCIENCE working group "Science and Urgent Problems of Society" 2 and the IUGG Commission on Geophysical Risk and Sustainability were initiators of the EUROSCIENCE - IUGG Advanced Research Workshop "Science for Reduction of Risk and Sustainable Development of Society" sponsored by the NATO Science Program. The Workshop was held on 15-16 June 2002 in Budapest, Hungary. More than 40 participants from 17 countries took part in the Workshop. Talks and discussions addressed mainly the question of how science can help in reduction of risk and sustainable development of society.

Are you ready to lead? Will you pass the test?

Despite all the effort through the years to understand what it takes to be an effective leader, the challenges of leadership remain enormously difficult and elusive; even today, most CEOs don't last five years in the job. The demands to deliver at a consistently high level can be unforgiving.

The loneliness. The weight of responsibility. The relentless second-guessing and criticism. The pressure to build all-star teams. The 24/7 schedule that requires superhuman stamina. The tough decisions that often leave no one happy. The expectation to always have the right answer when it can be hard just to know the right question.

These challenges are brought into their highest and sharpest relief in the corner office, but they are hardly unique to chief executives. All leaders face their own version of these tests, and the authors draw on the distilled wisdom, stories, and lessons from hundreds of chief executives to show how every aspiring leader can master these challenges and lead like a CEO. These foundational leadership skills will make all aspiring executives more effective in their roles today and lift the trajectory of their careers.

The CEO Test is the authoritative, no-nonsense insider's guide to navigating leadership's toughest challenges, brought to you by authors uniquely qualified to tell the stories. Adam Bryant has conducted in-depth interviews with more than 600 CEOs. Kevin Sharer spent more than two decades as president and then CEO of Amgen, where he led its expansion from $1 billion in annual revenues to nearly $16 billion. He has served on many boards and is a sought-after mentor for CEOs of global companies.

Leadership is getting harder as the speed of disruption across all industries accelerates. The CEO Test will better prepare you to succeed, whether you're a CEO or just setting out to become one.

Outlining the requirements for management success in the Twenty-first century, the author proposes both a senior management career path to achieving top executive responsibilities and how the CEO successfully meets his or her challenges once that apex position is achieved. Over forty years of global management experience, including more than a decade as a Chief executive officer, underscores the dynamics of this book. It is intended for the aspiring individual who currently has some management experience, the ambition and dedicated focus to be a business leader, the self-confidence to be recognized, and to be comfortable with risk taking and to exercise "out of the box" thinking in accomplishing the vision they develop for their organization. It definitely is not for the faint of heart The book covers all the dynamics of these objectives, including the importance of the family, effective time management, discipline in all of its meanings and the real relationships between the business leader, the Board of Directors, the executive team, shareholders, employees, the market, and the increasing influence of government actions and involvement. Simply put, the purpose of this book is to assist you in planning and executing your career path to advance from your current business responsibilities to those of senior executive leadership - to those of a Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director or similar level of responsibilities. Recognizing that times and business environments change, it is designed to meet the challenges of the 21st Century; challenges you will face as an executive. This book is based on the author's personal business experiences covering 40 plus years. His senior management background included that of a CEO and President of a global heavy manufacturing, engineering and construction, and systems corporation. His business, military service and academic background proved to be of considerable value during the ups and downs of personal, corporate, and family life. It also provided him the basis for steadfast standards and values, affording an ethical barrier against the increasing prevaricating, cheating, obfuscating, thievery, and fraudulent global business and government events of the last 30 years or so. Unlike the questionable ethics and opportunistic management practices so evidenced by the Enrons, WorldComs, Tyco Internationals, MCIs, AIGs and, more recently, the Madoffs, Stanfords and Rothsteins of the world; the standards underwrote the strategic soundness of "being smart rather than clever" and trust implied in such policies as "Your Word is your Bond." This book is about the value and benefits of hard work, smartly done. It is about strengthening your self-confidence, flexibility and agility, and of realizing that you'll never fully achieve your potential, but you'll always - throughout your life - be striving for that goal. You are the person who never quits. You will find the premises of this book of considerable value. It is for the individual who "wants to make a difference," and who realizes that risks always are present in striving to achieve worthwhile goals.