Evaluation of cost-benefit analyses for analyzing safety and safety measures in investment projects

摘要

In this paper we look closer at cost-benefit analyses as a tool for supporting decisions related to safety, focusing on advantages and disadvantages in forcing the decision-maker to express values in a comparable unit, and to use a tool which one can interpret as giving a correct answer. We conclude that cost-benefit analyses have an important role to play in such contexts, but seldom in the traditional sense of providing hard recommendations. Cost-benefit analyses should be seen as a tool for providing insights, using probabilities to express uncertainties and compute expected values, as well as sensitivity analyses to show how the results are being influenced by factors such as the expected cost per lived saved and discount rates. A result is transparency in the decision process. Two examples are included to illustrate our main points.