risk

Calculating and communicating uncertainty and risk to allow informed decision making

5:30pm - 7:30pm / Monday 24th April 2017 / Venue: Victoria Gallery & Museum
Type: Lecture / Category: University / Series: Open Lecture Series on Risk & Uncertainty
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Clear communication of uncertainty is crucial for effective risk management, but is difficult to achieve in practice. This is compounded when the application area is complex and accurate calculation of uncertainty is both challenging and time consuming.
Uncertainty communication must be clear to experts and non-experts alike and must account for a lack of understanding of the definitions of both "risk" and "uncertainty". This talk will examine the underpinning principals of how risk and uncertainty is understood and communicated, using examples of the wide variety of defence applications that require an understanding of uncertainty and outlining the reason that uncertainty calculation and communication is crucial to decision making.
The talk will then provide an illustrative scenario examining the theoretical release and spread of a disease within a city, demonstrating both the challenges faced in such a complex scenario and sharing current best practice when communicating with decision makers.

Dr Veronica Bowman is a principal statistician at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). She specialises in uncertainty calculation and communication and Bayesian inference. She has spent many years applying Bayesian methodology and data fusion techniques to problems in the military domain as well as working with academia to improve understanding of how uncertainty is propagated and how decisions should be taken under uncertainty.

Veronica is internationally recognised as the lead technical expert for Chemical, Biological and Radiological (CBR) knowledge management. She was the chair of the Calculating and Communicating Uncertainty Conference (CCU 2015), which bought together leading researchers from the field of uncertainty and has authored a chapter on communicating uncertainty in the Risk Management Handbook. Veronica has a BSc with First Class Honours and a PhD in Statistical Modelling both from the University of Southampton. She is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and is a chartered mathematician.

Free, please register online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-risk-lecture-series-veronica-bowman-dstl-tickets-32955226971