1. introduction natural hazards have existed in all periods of human life, but nowadays due to the exponential growth of human and population density in all aspects of life, especially in high risk areas, human has been faced with major disasters such as the asia tsunami, hurricane katrina and the earthquake in sichuan of china with significant casualties even in developed countries. these haza...

Two hazard risk assessment matrices for the ranking of occupational health risks are described. The qualitative matrix uses qualitative measures of probability and consequence to determine risk assessment codes for hazard-disease combinations. A walk-through survey of an underground metalliferous mine and concentrator is used to demonstrate how the qualitative matrix can be applied to determine...

Formal safety assessment (FSA), as a structured and systematic risk evaluation methodology, has been increasingly and broadly used in the shipping industry around the world. Concerns have been raised as to navigational safety of the Yangtze River, China's largest and the world's busiest inland waterway. Over the last few decades, the throughput of ships in the Yangtze River has increased rapidl...

he covariance matrix of asset returns is important for a wide range of individuals.1 Academics use estimates of the covariance matrix to test asset-pricing theories. Portfolio managers use the covariance matrix in designing tracking strategies where the return on their portfolio is designed to closely follow the return on a benchmark portfolio. Risk managers use the matrix to construct measures...

There is a growing awareness that ecological risk assessments (ERAs) could be improved if they made better use of ecological information. In particular, landscape features that determine the quality of wildlife habitat can have a profound influence on the estimated exposure to stressors incurred by animals when they occupy a particular area. Various approaches to characterizing the quality of h...

The Pratt-Arrow measure of local risk aversion is generalized for the n-dimensional state-preference model of choice under uncertainty in which the decision maker may have inseparable probabilities and subjective utilities, unobservable stochastic prior wealth, and/or smooth non-expected-utility preferences. Local risk aversion is measured by the matrix of derivatives of the decision maker’s ri...

Abstract: Portfolio risk forecasts are often made by estimating an asset or factor covariance matrix. Practitioners commonly want to adjust a global covariance matrix encompassing several sub-markets by individually correcting the sub-market diagonal blocks. Since this is likely to result in the loss of positive semi-definiteness of the overall matrix, the off-diagonal blocks must then be adjus...