In Risk Analysis of Complex and Uncertain Systems acknowledged risk authority Tony Cox shows all risk practitioners how Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) can be used to improve risk management decisions and policies. It develops and illustrates QRA methods for complex and uncertain biological, engineering, and social systems – systems that have behaviors that are just too complex to be modeled accurately in detail with high confidence – and shows how they can be applied to applications including assessing and managing risks from chemical carcinogens, antibiotic resistance, mad cow disease, terrorist attacks, and accidental or deliberate failures in telecommunications network infrastructure.

Written for a broad range of practitioners, including decision risk analysts, operations researchers and management scientists, quantitative policy analysts, economists, health and safety risk assessors, engineers, and modelers, the book emphasizes methods and strategies for modeling causal relations in complex and uncertain systems to the point at which effective risk management decisions can be made. Individual sections of the book introduce QRA, show how to avoid bad risk analysis, illustrate the principles for doing better analysis, and then show specific applications and extensions.