A New Approach to Project Risk Responses Selection with Inter-dependent Risks

Risks are natural and inherent characteristics of major projects. Risks are usually considered independently in analysis of risk responses. However, most risks are dependent on each other and dependent risks are rare in the real world. This paper proposes a model for proper risk response selection from the responses portfolio with the purpose of optimization of defined criteria for projects. This research has taken into account the relationships between risk responses; especially the relationships between risks, which have been rarely considered in previous works. It must be pointed out that not considering or superficial evaluation of the interactions between risks and risk responses reduces the expected desirability and increases project execution costs. This model is capable of optimization of different criteria in the objective function based on the proposed projects. Multi-objective Harmony Search (MOHS) is used to solve this model and the numerical results obtained are analyzed.