Choosing Safety: A Guide to Using Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Decision Analysis in Complex, High Consequence Systems

The technological age has seen a range of catastrophic and preventable failures, often as a result of decisions that did not appropriately consider safety as a factor in design and engineering. Through more than a dozen practical examples from the author’s experience in nuclear power, aerospace, and other potentially hazardous facilities, Choosing Safety is the first book to bring together probabilistic risk assessment and decision analysis using real case studies. For managers, project leaders, engineers, scientists, and interested students, Michael V. Frank focuses on methods for making logical decisions about complex engineered systems and products in which safety is a key factor in design - and where failure can cause great harm, injury, or death.

Michael V. Frank holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from UCLA. He has had decades of experience as a consultant in probabilistic risk assessment, decision analysis, and hazard analysis for both private industry and government, in areas ranging over nuclear reactors, aerospace systems, consumer products, nuclear fuel fabrication, and nuclear waste disposal.