Three influential risk foundation papers from the 80s and 90s: Are they still state-of-the-art?

Abstract

Three of the most influential scientific works in the risk field, at least in the engineering environment, are Stan Kaplan and John Garrick's paper from 1981 on risk quantification, George Apostolakis’ paper on probability from 1990, and Elisabeth Paté-Cornell's paper on uncertainty levels in risk assessments from 1996. The present article reviews and discusses these works, the aim being to acknowledge their important contributions to risk science and provide insights on how these works have influenced and relate to the state-of-the-art of the risk science of today. It is questioned to what extent these papers still represent state-of-the-art. Recent documents by the Society for Risk Analysis are used as a reference for comparison, in addition to related publications in scientific journals.