Abstract:
One of the main tasks when dealing with critical systems (systems where specific classes of failures can deal to human losses, or to huge financial losses) is the ability to quantify the associated risks, which is the door that, when opened, leads to paths towards understanding what can happen and why, and towards capturing the relationships existing between the different parts of the system, with respect to those risks.
This is also the necessary preliminary work allowing to evaluate the relative importance of different factors with respect to the analyzed risks, an important component of any disaster management system. Identifying the dominant ones is important to know which parts of the system we must reinforce. The talk describes through examples the different tools available for these tasks, and how they are used depending on the objectives to reach.
We also discuss the main related open research problems. In parallel to these catastrophes directly involving man’s action (we could call them engineering risks), we must face natural risks, which involve also human activities but whose ultimate cause is external to them. Here, the related problems and tools are different, and it is interesting to contrast them with the previously mentioned ones. We also try to overview this second area and its main open issues. 
The slides 
