What is Possible to Learn in Risk Management from the Tragedy in Japan

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the earthquake and tsunami occurred in Japan with regards to project risk management. He explains that any given risk has a probability greater than zero and less than 100%. Ricardo mentions that this earthquake was above any risk evaluation that had been established so far, and cites the atomic power plant in Fukushima as an example, which had very high and strong walls but have been nonetheless destroyed by the tsunami.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes PM. Podcast Today like to discuss with you the Tragedy in Japan and the relationship with Risk. Management why I'm doing this because we are facing in the cup of this one, big, big Tragedy and with the earthquake. And now, so that tsunami and now, so the nuclear plow power plants, and this was a big, big Tragedy four Japan. And for the word, and most of the time, when we are watching television, we see people saying how we can avoid this, how we can stop this and how we can not have any problem any more, or with nuclear energy or in a more F quakes.

And then I'd like to be very concrete here and very rational here. It's impossible to avoid Possible. This is the part of the life. It doesn't mean that we can meet again. So look, it's different. It's different. We need to reduce risk to an it's a standard that we can tolerate. And Japan was a huge, in a great example of that.

Remember up to one day before this earthquake Japan was an outstanding country regarding the response to the natural disaster. I remember when they recorded that Podcast of 81 year ago, remember it was in a much lower, powerful APH quake and kill more than 200,000 people.

And this was more than 100 times more strong, and the results were much less. I'm not saying that they were in relevant. We are extremely relevant, but much less. Yes. With a much more powerful. Why? Because Japan in the past, Learn it from or other disasters to prevent. But now when we such a Tragedy everybody forget this, everybody forgot this.

We need to understand that this earthquake was completely out of any kind of prediction, any kind that was far the largest and the strongest area. And so Japan what else repaired for several earthquakes, more than 500 F quakes around the date when the Tragedy happened, but in your other way, what happened?

What's outside of any kind of prevention So because of that, that we saw this. So now what we need two understand, we need to revisit or assumptions and maybe reduce our tolerance too, the risk, but never, we never will have plans to completely avoid the risk because this is a part, this is a both and beyond our own control.

And does is the natural off risk, risk management is exactly this. You are unsure you do it. No. If something will our not happen. And this is the challenge for us. So look, the new car plan. When we see on the television, they look so a week, but this is not true. This one not true. What happened is that they were unprepared for this kind of magnitude of not only earthquake, but also at tsunami.

And this may be maybe now in the future, we need to revisit all our assumptions and maybe redefine of boot in the nuclear power plants in not a places in a lot of the way may be improved. Save it here. I don't know, but we can't avoid. We can say, okay, Oh, let's stop doing nuclear power plants. I work it. I was a trainee and the Brazilian nuclear agency. It's so interesting to see this. I'm not defending, but it's so interesting not to say, Oh, let's stop this.

It's impossible. Because if we use the same assumption, we need to stop doing everything because Hey, everything has risk and trying to be very rare national here, everything. So we need to understand the risk management is the discipline that runs with uncertainty. We are not sure of what is going on. And because of that, we need to develop models to improve our ability, to predict in our society, to reduce the consequence of the Risk for sure in the future, Japan will be different, will be completely different, but we need to understand that Catherine was completely outside, out of any kind, kind of prediction.

The look, when we prepare an oil platform in the ocean, we usually calculate the biggest wave in the last 1000 years. But let's suppose that tomorrow we have a way that it's a bigger and better that the biggest wave in 1000 years, and this can happen. We cannot, we are completely safe, but we think that with this prediction, we have more safe.

We are more safe. So look, disease is the challenge for us while understand risk management. So I'd like to finish this podcast, sending our support and our strong support and condolence to the families in Japan. And for sure, all the project management managers around the world are here to support and help in any way the Japan to build up. And also let's try to build, bring this all this hard knowledge.

We produce it with this strategy to bring this, to prepare and refine more our risk management and to understand that life is sometimes unpredictable and we need to deal with that. There is no risk free action. Thank you very much. And see you next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

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What is Possible to Learn in Risk Management from the Tragedy in Japan

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