The safety of risk or the risk of safety?

Safety is nowadays one of the main items on the agenda during the planning, realisation and management of most large-scale projects, particularly in infrastructure and building projects in intensively used areas such as multiple use of land projects. It is vital that safety aspects are properly assessed at an early possible stage of the project. In this paper relations between safety and risk are suggested. In order to quantify the safety in objective terms, risk (analysis) is used as an important tool. However, definitions of risk vary from global and informal to objective variants and consists both psychological and mathematical elements. When a risk analysis is performed, one has to consider these…