Tuesday, December 2, 2008

One More Risk Profile Graph

I recently posted a collection of risk graphs that I found through Google image search. There was one graph that I wanted to include but could not find again until this morning. It was produced as part of Dutch study on work-related stress in the police force. The study took the approach of identifying the main risk factors in workers' psychological profiles that impact work-related stress. The risk profile below shows a Tornado graph derived from interviewing several thousand workers in 1999 and then again five years later in 2005.

image

Actions were taken to reduce the most significant risk factors (rated as unfavourable on the right) which included work satisfaction, intention to leave the job, relation at work, feedback and quantitative job demands (overwork?). On the other hand, some already favourable risk factors were improved further.

The graph is neither colourful nor visually striking (easy to fix) yet I like the representation in terms of risk factors. In fact I now believe that identifying and rating the main contributing risk factors is one of the best approaches to risk analysis. I see risk factors as the basic variables in a risk model that need not be instantiated further. One could attempt to quantify and combine the risk factors above, but in my experience this exercise would prove difficult to justify and likely to be of little additional value beyond identification of the risk factors themselves.

I recently posted on risk factors for identifying malware, based on a patent application for risk-based scanning by Kapersky. Though many people disagreed that the patent would be useful, again it was the risk factor decomposition that interested me. In many instances of IT risk, the mere process of identifying and rating risk factors will bring the most value.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I see the updates of google and it no more risk anymore.



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