F. R. Farmer

F. Reg Farmer OBE, FRS, (1914-2001) was a nuclear regulator (working for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority's Safety and Reliability Directorate, SRD) and later an academic at Imperial College London.

Accomplishments

*He considered the public acceptability of risk, (eg from nuclear reactors), arguing that a whole spectrum of events needs to be considered - not just the Maximum Credible Accident, but also those of less consequence but which were much more probable.

*He used examples such as hill walking to define a spectrum of risks which people found acceptable.

*He embodied this in a variation of (Acceptable Risk Frequency/Event Probability) with (Consequence), which is usually called the Farmer Curve.

*Farmer postulated a near-inverse variation as acceptable - thus events which have twice the consequence must be approximately half as frequent, or less. The Farmer Curve is usually plotted as a straight line in log-log co-ordinates.

References

* [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v267/n5607/abs/267092a0.html] typical Farmer Paper
* [http://www.cesnef.polimi.it/corsi/sicura/RISK1of2.pdf] 'Farmer Curve'