Researchers Awarded Grant to Develop Class Modules on Loss Prevention
May 25, 2012
Two Old Dominion University researchers have received a $50,000 grant from insurance giant FM Global to create loss prevention engineering modules, which ultimately are aimed at reducing the likelihood and severity of supply chain disruptions.
Ariel Pinto, assistant professor of engineering management in the Frank Batten College of Engineering and Technology (BCET), and Michael McShane, assistant professor of finance, co-founders of the Emergent Risk Initiative at ODU (ERI@ODU), are co-principal investigators on the grant, which will be used to develop undergraduate academic class modules to introduce loss prevention.
The $50,000 grant, underwritten and administered by the Spencer Educational Foundation, will allow the university to take a leading role in loss prevention advocacy, and make ODU's College of Business and Public Administration and BCET programs stronger in the area of risk management.
Pinto and McShane started their collaboration in late 2009, thanks to a $20,000 multidisciplinary seed grant from ODU's Office of Research for their project "Multidisciplinary Investigation of Emerging and Complex Risks: Developing Integrated Risk Management Expertise." It led to the creation of ERI@ODU, which has as a goal making ODU a leader in cross-disciplinary research on risk management.
Pinto and McShane attended April's Risk and Insurance Management Society conference in Philadelphia, where the grant was announced. Working in consultation with FM Global - a company that uses a non-traditional model to determine risk through engineering analysis - the researchers will focus on loss prevention engineering in the creation of the three, 60-minute class modules.
The two also collaborated on a paper, "System of systems perspective on risk: towards a unified concept," in the most recent edition of International Journal of System of Systems Engineering.
The Emergent Risk Initiative envisions the creation of the next-generation body of knowledge in risk management for current and future systems and organizations characterized by uncertainty, emergence, complexity and interdependence.