Risk is the potential negative impact on an asset or characteristic of value that may arise from a present process or future event. An operational definition of risk is the expected loss resulting from the consequence that a hazard has occurred. Risk assessment consists of tools for determining potential risks and the strategies and cost for managing them. It is the goal of this talk to present an introduction to the quantitative strategies that have been proposed in the literature. The talk will begin with attempts to build a coherent model for risk by introducing axioms and a decision making framework for the evaluation of risk. This will be followed by an overview of quantitative models used to evaluate risk as well as models for determining the number and size of losses that might occur from system breakdowns during a fixed time interval. The talk will end with remarks about current research for developing multivariate distributions with technologies such as the use of copulas.

Keywords: Risk assessment; Axioms; Models; Multivariate distributions

Biography: Professor Melnick is a former Chair of the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at New York University. He has won 15 teaching awards including the University's Distinguished Teaching Award. His research focuses on the development and assessment of time series models and quantitative risk analysis. He is the co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Quantitative Risk Analysis and Assessment (Wiley, 2008). He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Elected Member of ISI, Invited Member of the Project Oversight Group (Research Committee for the Society of Actuaries), and Associate Editor of the Journal of Forecasting.