Save me from the snow – a perspective on risk

I recently attended and presented at the MCC Clinical Trial Risk and Performance Management Summit in Princeton. It was a fantastic event – always great to meet people you’ve been talking with on the phone and there was a real energy and desire to exchange ideas and learn. Around noon on day two, snow started to fall. And it kept falling. I wasn’t concerned. After all, snow is hardly unusual in these parts and I assumed it would all be sorted out fine. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. Our taxi was around an hour late arriving to take us to Newark airport. And the drive that should have taken 45 minutes took four hours. There were plenty of accidents and broken-down vehicles on the way. When we got near to the airport itself, things seemed to get worse and at one point we were stuck, not moving, for around an hour. At the airport itself there was plenty of confusion as flight after flight was cancelled. The queue for the Customer Service Desk for people to rebook flights and find a hotel was around 400 people. I estimated based on the processing time that it would take around 10 hours for the person at the end of the queue to be seen. My flight was delayed by five hours but did leave. Other delegates from the conference had flights cancelled and ended up in the airport over night.

It did get me thinking about the whole thing from a risk perspective. This was, apparently a rare event – so much snow settling in November. The probability of such an event was low. But the impact was quite significant on people trying to get anywhere and many people’s plans were significantly disrupted. This is one of those high impact, low probability events which are actually rather difficult to manage from a risk perspective. Much more extreme examples are the 2011 Fukishima nuclear plant melt down following a tsunami caused by an earthquake, and the possibility of a large asteroid hitting the earth. There’s even a UK government report on these high impact, low probability events from 2011 where a range of experts reviewed the latest research and different approaches. It’s important not to simply dismiss these risks – in particular because the probability is actually rather uncertain. The events happen rarely which makes determining the true probability difficult. One approach is to improve detection – if you can detect early enough to take action, you can reduce the impact. And you can always have contingencies in place.

So back to the snow. I wonder, could they have predicted earlier that there was going to be so much snow? And that it would actually settle rather than melt away? Why didn’t they have better contingencies in place (e.g. gritting of roads, snow ploughs, better practices to deal with customers whose flights have been cancelled)? And here’s a scary thought – the probability of such events may be low. But it is uncertain. And with climate change, could it be that weather-related high impact, low probability events are actually becoming more common? Perhaps we need to improve our detection and contingencies for such events in the future.

On a final note, I will say I was very impressed by the stoicism of those impacted. I saw no-one getting angry. I saw people queuing in apparently hopeless queues without complaint. And there was plenty of good humour to go around. Enough to lift the spirits as we head into the holiday season!

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