Risk and Liability

Engineer’s Criterion of Acceptable Risk

An acceptable risk is one in which the product of the probability and magnitude of the harm is equaled or exceeded by the product of the probability and magnitude of the benefit.

The utilitarian approach to risk embodied in cost-benefit analysis had undoubted advantages in terms of clarity, elegance, and susceptibility to numerical interpretation.

Functions of Ethical Theories in Engineering Ethics

The Public’s Approach to Risk

Expert and Layperson

• There are the profound differences between the engineering and public approach to risk.
• They have been the sources of miscommunication and even acrimony.

Why does an engineer need to understand these differences?

What are the grounds for these profound differences in outlook on risk?

Why Need to Understand the Differences?

• The engineer, when quantifying risks and benefits, must remember to think about the public’s understanding and acceptance of the risks that engineer’s work will impose and know that it may be very different from the way engineers assess risks.
• If the engineer makes decisions about the acceptability of a certain risk and somehow miscalculates the public’s perception, and if harms should occur from risks considered acceptable in an engineering assessment, the public may view the engineer’s actions from a different perspective and unsympathetically.