Glossary Term

Acceptable risk

The level of potential losses a society or community considers acceptable given existing social, economic, political, cultural, technical, and environmental conditions. In engineering terms, Acceptable risk is also used to assess and define the structural and non-structural measures that are needed in order to reduce possible harm to people, property, services, and systems to a chosen tolerated level, according to codes or accepted practice; which are based on known probabilities of hazards and other factors.