If you looked at the program from the last couple of days, certainly it can be applied to chemical, physical, and zoonotic risk as well as assessing the risk of giving various people access to your facilities and the risk associated with personal protective devices. There is a principle that we identified as being associated with the notion of risk management, If you believe in risk management principles then you first must be able to measure it before you can manage it. Therefore, we will allow a maximum risk to be X and you can pick for yourself what you want that maximum risk to be. The notion here is that you can quantitate it to some degree and make a better decision based on that quantitation. There is a methodology to risk assessment.
Risk assessment needs to rely on databases.
Michael shared with us something called a probability density function that shows that the likelihood that each point under a data curve is likely to be true. If you have that sort of mathematical formula it increases your level of certainty in decision making. There was also recogniton that it definitely is not an exact science. Someone commented that the area in the middle of the curve is definitely muddy when it comes to decision making. We also talked philosophically a bit about our willingness to live without this tool.