Risk and uncertainty analysis in the planning stages of a risk decision-making process

Natural disaster risk, a long-time concern in the insurance industry, is increasingly recognized as a present danger in the business strategies of risk control and enterprise management agencies. Floods and earthquakes can cause massive loss of life and infrastructure, resulting in business interruption and heavy casualties. Many of the short-term developmental strategies employed throughout the world have only served to exacerbate the impact of natural disasters. Therefore, this study presents a review of formal methods that are commonly used in risk and uncertainty analysis in planning and concludes with a critical assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of the different priority setting methods. Our focus is a preliminary proposal for developing an efficient probabilistic approach to facilitate design optimization that involves probabilistic constraints. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012