Abstract
Risk assessment represents a complicated process in the course of which a subjective deliberate distortion of results must be avoided. Simultaneously, the evaluator should however be allowed to take into account his/her own preferences that give him/her, in return, a possibility of maximum use of acquired results of this assessment. For this purpose, authors present the article that deals with the problems of preference risk assessment in the area of electric power critical infrastructure. The essence of preference risk assessment is the employment of multi-criteria analysis using the techniques of criteria hierarchy assessment or applying the methods based on quantification of utility function. Such a method of assessment enables the owners of electric power facilities and other stakeholders to prefer the assessment of specific risk kinds depending on the type of facility (generation, transmission and distribution) and the securing of required safety level.
When studying the preferences, this article starts from the premise that requirements for the level of safety of individual facilities within the electric power sector will differ according to specific type of electric power facility. However, the preferences will also differ according to opinion about the studied element, e.g. in the case of requirements concerning the effectiveness of operation (economic risk) or if the given element is studied as part of critical infrastructure. On this basis, it can be stated that it will not be possible to settle differences in the systems of preferences by means of creation of a single system of preferences, which will be universally applicable, but that it will be possible to settle them by means of several purpose-built systems. Possibilities of creation of such assessment systems are the subject of this contribution.
