Data Mining and Predictive Analysis

12

Risk and Threat Assessment

“Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.”

Neils Bohr

The world is filled with risk. Every action that we consider or take has some degree of risk associated with it. We conduct risk or threat assessments internally almost constantly as we move through our lives. “Should I pull out in front of this car?” “Will I run out of gas?” “Can I skip my annual checkup?” These are only a few of the many calculated risks that we take each day.

Part of risk assessment is weighing the likelihood of a particular outcome associated with a particular action or inaction against the potential seriousness of the outcome. For example, when making a decision to fly, we know that the risk of a crash is extremely small; however, ...