Confidence in Probabilistic Risk Assessment

Abstract

Epistemic uncertainties are included in probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) as second-order probabilities that represent the degrees of belief of the scientists that a model is correct. In this paper, I propose an alternative approach that incorporates the scientist’s confidence in a probability set for a given quantity. First, I give some arguments against the use of precise probabilities to estimate scientific uncertainty in risk analysis. I then extend the “confidence approach” developed by Brian Hill and Richard Bradley to PRA. I finally claim that this approach better represents model uncertainty than the standard (Bayesian) one.