Decoding Risk Management: The Crucial Means-End Aspect of Countermeasures and Hazards

This paper explores the relationship between countermeasures and hazards in contemporary risk management frameworks. The fundamental premise posits hazards as undesirable ends, with countermeasures serving as the means to prevent or mitigate adverse situations. Focusing on foundational principles within socio-technical systems, the paper explores the aggregation and decomposition of countermeasure-hazard relations in a means-end manner. Action theories, grounded in this dimension, offer significant potential for informed decision-making in design, operation, and maintenance tasks. Through a case study on the function-centered hazard identification approach (F-CHIA), the paper illustrates practical applications in robotics safety, deriving risk mitigation strategies within design specifications. Ultimately, it underscores the critical role of the means-end dimension in effective risk mitigation strategies, contributing to advancements in risk
management.