Environmental risks: A discussion of risk acceptance and risk indexes

The last decades there has been an increasing focus on risks of environmental damages due to human activities. As a consequence use of risk analyses and risk acceptance criteria have become ususal in some industries, e.g. the Norwegian petroleum industry. However, there are still many challenges related to finding appropriate risk indexes and to express what is acceptable risk. Based on existing literature and on experiences in the Norwegian petroleum industry some of these challenges are discussed in this paper.