Ovecoming Obstacles to the Exchange of Information between Risk Tools

Risk tools have matured to the point where they support a variety of risk-informed decision making. While we may expect continued development of such tools to lead to further individual improvements, we believe the greatest gains are to be had from their integration. Our work to date in connecting risk tools has had successes, but also has revealed there to be significant impediments to information exchange between them. These impediments stem from the well-known phenomenon of “semantic dissonance” [Kent, 1978] – mismatch between conceptual assumptions made by the separately developed tools. This issue represents a fundamental challenge that arises regardless of the mechanism of information exchange. This paper explains the issue and illustrates it with reference to our experiences to date connecting several risk tools. We motivate this work, present and discuss the solutions we have adopted to surmount these impediments, and the implications this work has for future efforts to integrate risk tools.