ALARP in Engineering: Risk Based Design and CBA

It has not been far, over a century, since humankind conceived that hazardous incidents should be substantially managed to procrastinate the future could-be hazards. In the middle of the twentieth century, nonetheless, safety measures were passed by officials and introduced to authorities, and private sectors, so as to reduce risks, environmental impacts of the hazards and to evaluate probable outcomes. Therefore, the concept of ALARP, meaning 'as low as reasonably practicable' presented back then, has been implemented in risk reduction management to make decisions upon acceptability and tolerability of risks. In order to do so, a few so-called tools, such as Cost-Benefit Analysis, are specified to societal and other types of risks so that we could weigh the balance of the amount of capital to be invested on safety on the one hand, and the extracted benefit attained out of the investment on the other. This implementation opaquely carries on several social, socio-economic, political and even environmental implications. Nevertheless, it has brought up some concerns into proponents' mindset, ranging from practicality and political reality to calling into question whether ALARP is mainly theoretical. The aim of this study is to figure out whether Cost-Benefit Analysis can be an appropriate tool to analyse the true outcome(s) of ALARP. This paper will offer a critical point of view over the risk-evaluating concept to discern how much it has been practically efficient.