ASME gets green light to lead U.S. effort for unifying risk assessment

Emily M. Smith
ASME NEWS

A 12-month project to develop guidelines for assessing and reporting risk will be directed by ASME's Critical Assets Protection Initiative and funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Government agencies and businesses will be the target audience for the guidance procedures that will be developed during the $1.6 million project.

The risk project was announced in September in Washington, D.C., when the Critical Assets Protection Initiative (CAPI) officially kicked off the ASME/Department of Homeland Security Risk Project, entitled "The Development of Guidance on Risk Analysis and Management for Homeland Security." CAPI is managed by ASME's Government Relations Dept.

Senior officials from the DHS Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate and the Office of Domestic Preparedness attended the kickoff.

The risk project resulted from the activities and recommendations developed by the CAPI risk team after a joint society workshop meeting sponsored by OSTP in 2002. Kenneth Balkey chaired the CAPI risk team.

During the September 2003 meeting, DHS officials indicated that the project would become the model of collaboration between that department and other federal and non-governmental organizations.

The new measures will create uniformity in how risk is determined and how the results of risk studies are reported. ASME will steer a consortium of public, private and professional society organizations to create the guidelines. The project is scheduled to wrap up in September 2004.

The new document is intended to have broad applicability and use by government agencies and private industry in coordinating decisions regarding protection of critical assets and the infrastructure.

DHS asked ASME to spearhead the development of common procedures for performing risk analysis and assessing the effectiveness of proposed critical asset protection initiatives in order to enable government and private industry to better determine allocation of resources.

Bilal M. Ayyub, a professor at the University of Maryland, and J. Robert Sims of Becht Engineering Co. will be the team co-chairs. Other risk project members are James W. Jones and Barry D. Sloane. ASME member Richard Feigel will chair the risk project's steering committee. All five men are members of ASME.

ASME units involved in the project include the Public Affairs Department, the Codes and Standards Institute, and the Center for Research and Technology Development.

For more information about the risk guidelines project, contact Reese Meisinger at (202) 785-3756 or e-mail him at meisingerr@asme.org.

 

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