A General Purpose Risk Assessment System Supporting Black Swan Theory

“A General Purpose Risk Assessment System Supporting Black Swan Theory”

Speaker: Ehlschlaeger, C. (US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center, Construction Engineering Research Lab (CEERD-CERL))

Date: 28 November 2018

Speaker Session Preview

SMA hosted a speaker session presented by Dr. Chuck Ehlschlaeger (US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center, Construction Engineering Research Lab [CEERD-CERL]) as a part of its SMA General Speaker Series. During this presentation, Dr. Ehlschlaeger spoke about the Framework Incorporating Complex Uncertain Systems (FICUS) modeling system that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Colorado State University, and CEERD have constructed. FICUS is a “neighborhood-scale social, infrastructural, and environmental modeling system that quantifies the uncertainty of all input data, propagates that uncertainty through tightly coupled space-time models, and visually presents uncertainty information and intuitive insights to planners and analysts.” FICUS provides users general purpose geographic and temporal analyses, with a focus on risk assessment. Dr. Ehlschlaeger then explained “white swan,” “grey swan,” and “black swan” events, detailing how Black Swan Theory can be applied to models such as FICUS to minimize the cognitive issues of understanding and assessing risk. To conclude, Dr. Ehlschlaeger discussed the “theoretical and practical benefits of using an uncertainty quantifying, uncertainty propagating, and uncertainty visualizing geographic information system for risk assessment,” highlighting the Philippines as an applied case study.