Important announcement

Dear visitor,

Please note that this OpenCourseWare platform will be replaced at the end of 2026 by a new platform (under the same url ocw.tudelft.nl).

Courses and their contents that are currently available the platform will partly be migrated. URL’s for this content will change and content might be unavailable for some time. In addition, some courses will not be available anymore.

If you are linking to specific courses on this platform (for instance for your students), please take timely measures to avoid problems with access. Possible actions are:

  • Download the materials to your local platform (laptop, server)
  • For educators only (including TU Delft lecturers): Contact us at ocw@tudelft.nl and inform us what course you are using in what context (institute, program, period of use, number of students). We will research (in collaboration with the authors of the course) and decide if we will migrate the course, and if yes, can supply you with a new url.

Thank you.

5. Understanding and Identifying Risk

This lecture set starts Part 3 of the course: Risk and Safety.

One of the pillars and key values of RI is risk analysis and safety engineering. But what do we mean by risk? What are ways to determine risks? How do we deal with uncertainty and the ‘unknown unknowns’? In this lecture set, we will introduce some fundamental concepts to think about risk in a systematic way.

  • First, how does one deal given an uncertain future and the inevitable ‘unknown unknowns’? That will be the focus for this week. We will start by discussing ways to assess future technologies.
  • After that, we will have a close look at the Precautionary Principle (with climate change and nanoparticles as running examples) and how we can – and should – integrate uncertainty and mitigation of risks in the design and evaluation process.
  • We will wrap up with a look at the two different ways to produce nuclear energy (open and closed cycle processes) and the different implications these have for future generations.
  • 1. Technology Assessment & Responsible Innovation
  • 2. Managing Uncertainty and Ignorance
  • 3. Case Study: Nuclear Energy
  • 4. Bonus: Frameworks for Technology (Impact) Assessment

Readings are provided in the Readings section.

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