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Living with legacy risk - the limits of practicalities?

Ale, Ben J. M., Hartford, Des N. D. and Slater, David H. 2021. Living with legacy risk - the limits of practicalities? Sustainability 13 (6) , 3004. 10.3390/su13063004

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Abstract

Legacy risks from infrastructures and industrial installations often reveal themselves when a potential for failure has been discovered much later than at the stage of the design and construction of a structure. In which case, there might already be a problem with the legacy installation, or even a crisis, without having had an accident. When the hazard cannot be taken away, the question arises as to how much effort, if any, should be spent on improving the situation. The usefulness of the three archetypical approaches to this problem: setting a standard, the as low as reasonably practicable approach and a case-by-case discourse approach are discussed for their applicability for these legacy risks. Although it would be desirable to retrofit legacy risks to previously set legal requirements as is the case when acceptability limits are set in law or demonstration of ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) is demanded, it may be impossible to reduce the residual risk to an otherwise acceptable level without taking away or replacing the infrastructure, which is not acceptable either. Therefore in conclusion the only available solution to persistent legacy risk problems seems to be to have a thorough discussion with all relevant stakeholders until an agreement is in some way found.

Item Type: Article
Date Type: Publication
Status: Published
Schools: Engineering
Additional Information: This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/
Publisher: MDPI
ISSN: 2071-1050
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 3 August 2021
Date of Acceptance: 5 March 2021
Last Modified: 07 May 2023 14:32
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/142869

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