RISK VISUALIZERTM
Risk Communications Tool

Today, PRA results are used in a wide variety of utility decision-making settings. One of the key challenges for the PRA community today is the communication and adoption of risk management principles within a utility organization. Unfortunately, in many cases, the understanding of PRA and PRA results is limited to the PRA organization.

As the PRA has become a key input to utility and regulatory decision-making, there is an increasing need to expand the level of understanding outside of the cubicles of the PRA engineers and into the broader utility organization.

In order to help communicate risk results within the organization many utilities have adopted a four quadrant poster. Typically, these posters include information on initiating events, systems, and operator actions. While beneficial, these posters are static and leave much to the interpretation of the reader. Furthermore, while they do serve to raise the visibility of risk within the organization, they are often out-of-sight, out-of-mind and not available to support all levels of decision-making.

Two utilities have embarked on an effort to deploy this information electronically, in order to facilitate more timely and complete communication of risk information across the utility organization. The vehicle for this is a mobile 'app', Risk VisualizerTM.

Risk VisualizerTM provides access to the PRA results poster, and more, on a real-time basis, in the palm of your hand via a Smart Phone or other mobile device. To date, the RiskVizTM software has been successfully deployed on Blackberry, iPhone, and iPad devices to support use across the entire utility organization. This will allow all organizations to have access to the information on demand, as well as more detailed data and explanations of the data.