The overall aim of this article is to contribute to the further development of the area of benchmarking in risk management. The article introduces a two-step benchmarking model to assess the efficacy of ISO risk management systems. It furthermore aims at verifying its usefulness in terms of finding hidden risk issues and improvement opportunities. The existence of all key elements of an ISO 31000-based risk management system is examined at the beginning of this study. Then, the quality in terms of efficacy of important aspects of the risk management system is examined in more detail with special benchmarks. The application of the model to six ISO-certified organizations follows and reinforces the novelty of this study, which is to combine risk science knowledge with benchmarking theory in the application of ISO risk management standards in organizations. The results show that the benchmarking model developed in this study provides rigor when assessing and evaluating the efficacy of an ISO risk management system. By applying the model, risk issues and risk factors can be found that had not previously been identified. The findings are of importance for risk management, the benchmarking science, and for the development of ISO risk management standards.

This study introduces a systems-theoretic methodology to meet the requirements of a major national infrastructure for safety and security-based design by enhancing the alignment of stakeholders and actors in the project. Safe-by-Design (SbD) is an engineering concept for risk management that considers safety as much as possible in the design phase. The article presents the results of a case study conducted to investigate the efficacy of recent system safety models and analysis techniques in the major national infrastructure of a Waste-to-Energy (WtE) project under consideration in Iceland. The structures and roles within the system responsible for constructing the WtE plant, given the sustainability and circular economy restrictions, are addressed in the study. Stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities are analyzed, yielding their feedback on potential risks and creating a positive image of the project. Also, suitable ways to enter the project and finance it are devised. In essence, this enables the creation of a safety and security-based design approach. Furthermore, detailed documentation of the system model development is presented. The novelty of the study lies in the application of STAM, STPA, and STECA as an SbD approach for a major infrastructure project. Also, the methods discussed here have not been used in a WtE project as far as we know.

General deployment of optical fibre technology commenced in the eighties. Its introduction revolutionised the telecommunications arena and has become the foundation of most telecommunication systems in use today. Optical fibres connect continents and countries, are used in core and access networks and for backhauling of mobile communication systems. The internet would barely exist without optical fibres and globalisation would hardly have seen the dawn of light. Three submarine optical cables connect Iceland to the outside world; Farice and Danice connect Iceland to Europe and Greenland Connect to America via Greenland. The optical ring around Iceland constitutes the Icelandic core network. The ring passes by nearly all villages and towns and fibre deployment in the access network has reached an advanced state. Fibre deployment in rural areas has already begun and will presumably be finished in a few years. Iceland plays a leading role in fibre deployment. In this paper, fibre utilisation in Iceland will be described, both in core and access networks. Three different architectures for fibre deployment in the access network will be described. Competition on fibre networks will also be discussed.