Risk information in decision-making: definitions, requirements and various functions

Inappropriate decisions are often regarded as causes of major accidents in the process industries. To improve the quality of decisions, it is important to make the right information available at the right time. The objective of this work is to investigate what types of risk information is needed for risk-related decisions in various decision-making processes. A framework is proposed to facilitate future research for easing information deficiency. In this paper, risk information is examined through common decision-making processes, and is identified serving to 1) detect and characterize risk-related decision problems, 2) indicate the severity and urgency of decisions, 3) state requirements and constraints of workable solutions, 4) represent attributes for comparing and evaluating solutions, and 5) act as rules to maintain safety or control risk. These usages of risk information in different decision problems imply the large diversity in information needs for decision-making. An adaptive information support is thus suggested to provide targeted risk information to specific decision-makers for effective and efficient decision-making in accident prevention in the process industries.