Experimental Riskology: A New Discipline for Risk Analysis
Chongfu Huang a,b,c
a State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resources Ecology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;
b Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China;
c Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Civil Affairs & Ministry of Education, Peoples' Republic of China, Beijing, China.
Abstract: Risk, as a scene in the future, is neither visible nor touchable, but it does exist. Nobody can see a risk in the future, but only events that have already occurred. Any past scene is not risk. The risk analysis is for the future. To promote riskology becoming an independent domain with its core, we suggest in this article the establishment of a new discipline: experimental riskology. People invented some totems to explain risks. Experimental riskology would help us to see what a risk is. Referencing the inverted pendulum experiment in control theory and a computer simulation experiment in a management system based on their fundamental models, we suggest a Ball-Platform-Device-Power system to model a simple pseudo risk, probability risk, fuzzy risk, and uncertain risk.
Keywords: risk; totem; experiment; inverted pendulum; computer simulation.
Published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment. 2013, 19: 389-399.
