Professor emeritus Gustaf Östberg, Riskhantering, Institutionen för hållfasthetslära, Universitetet i Lund: Decison and action in situations with lack of data

In order to give you a better grasp of the contents of the seminar I have translated a preliminary outline of the contents of the seminar from a letter by professor Östberg:

1. Introduction, personal background.

a) 2reflective practioner2

b) pragmatical aspects, own experiences from

° industry as an engineer,

° research within Materials Engineering in industry and at university,

° handling in theory and practice from societal and technical viewpoints.

2. The question at issue.

Handling of uncertain basis for decision consisting of partly "hard", partly "soft" data and information.

a) fundamental inconsistences from a scientific point of view

b) psychological turns between "hard" and "soft"; temptations to surrender

to either positivism or 2intuition2

c) moral demands

d) the solutions and necessities of practice

e) ways to investigate the questions at issue, reconstructions after the

event, Ethnomethodology

3. Outline of the speech

Accounts of various case studies based on point 2 above:

a) decisions on "change of technology"

b) determination of public welfare

c) determinism and probabilistics

d) "capital destruction" in connection with the close down of the nuclear

power mills at Barsebäck.

Välkommna!
Kenneth Nilsson