Modelling and Prioritization of System Risks in Early Project Phases

The rising complexity of product and systems demands further attention to potential Risks. While researchers explore tools and methods to identify system risk, its prioritization remains a challenging task in a multistakeholder environment. Hazard is the source of risk and causes harm. Harm may have different degree of severity. Next to the degree of severity, frequency of its occurrence is relevant to risk. These are often hardly quantifiable. While the accurate quantification remains a challenge, a flexible and pluralistic approach can bring major risks on the top of list. This paper offers a methodology for ranking risks in early phases of design with presence of a high level of uncertainty. It uses a pluralistic approach for prioritization of hazards. It adapts probability theory to embed flexibly in communication with stakeholders and process the available information. A graphical tool facilitates this communication and probabilistically utilize available information about system hazards. It suggests the “degree of consensus” as a metric to rank the identified risks. This metric represents the consent of stakeholders on the system risks used for system architecture, design decisions, or alternative evaluations. The paper explains the mathematical formulation and presents an application example for this.