Development of international risk analysis standards

The International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC) Technical Committee 5 6 "Dependability" develops international standards on dependability as well as risk analysis. IEC is primarily working in the electrotechnical field, but IEC dependability standards are valid in all technical fields. IEC 6030 0 standards consists of umbrella documents, application guides and tools. T he umbrella documents IEC 60300-1 and 60300-2 on dependability assurance an d dependability programme elements and tasks are expected to become very im portant, along with related application guides, because they will be linked to ISO 9000 quality system standards. TC 56 has developed a number of stan dards applicable to risk analysis of technological systems. An overview of existing risk analysis standards and a short description of some standards is presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.