Summary

This review gives sources of information to help you undertake risk assessment for a project. Risk assessment is defined and its applications are outlined. Links to online courses, software, consultants and publications related to risk assessment are also given.

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INTRODUCTION

Georgius Agricola says this about the risk of mining:

The critics say further that mining is a perilous occupation to pursue because the miners are sometimes killed by the pestilential air which they breathe; sometimes their lungs rot away; sometimes the men perish by being crushed in masses of rock; sometimes falling from ladders into the shafts, they break their arms, legs, or necks; and it is added, there is no compensation which should be thought great enough to equalize the extreme dangers to safety and life.

From the decision to invest in a new mine to the decision to go underground to work in an operating mine, there is risk. I know of no work (book, paper, conference proceeding, thesis) that adequately covers all aspects of mine risk in a logical and consistent way. And I do not try to rectify that gap here.

In this review, I point you to sources of information that may help you undertake your own risk assessment of your own sphere of operations at your mine. This scope recognizes that each risk assessment is unique; no two are the same; and a successful risk assessment leading to a reduction or elimination of risk is only as good as the knowledge, skill, and effort of those undertaking the assessment.

DEFINITION

The term risk means different things to different people. To take Agricola's example of falling off ladders: if ten people a day climb a ladder in a mine, for say 300 days a year, and on average one person per year falls off a ladder and breaks his leg, the risk is easily calculated to be one in about three-thousand that climbing that mine's ladder will break your leg.

This is an example of objective risk quantification: numbers are used after the fact to calculate the risk.

Conversely, as an example of subjective risk estimation, assume you are trying to set your salary so that you are reasonably compensated for the risk of being crushed in masses of rock. There are many equations you could use, but none mean anything unless you and your employer can agree on the future probability of bone-crushing events. You will, no doubt, propose a higher number than the employer who will proclaim, correctly, that it has not happened before at his mine and therefore the risk is miniscule. You, on the other hand, may point to industry statistics and your subjective fears and judgment. It could get complicated.

But at some point you will have to agree that the risk boils down to the probability of a rock fall at a mine in general, the probability of the fall being at the mine where you work, the probability that you will be there when it happens, and the probability of you actually being crushed as compared to merely scratched.