Designing a cooling tower could be a risky business ... if not done correctly!

Vulnerabilities(1)	Threats(2)	Risks(3)
Evaluation error of how much thermal load to dispose of	Plant served by the tower is lacking efficiency	Decrease in production and / or possible damage to the plant
Lower cost	Objective not achieved	Ineffective or useless project

A cooling tower project, like every project, could result into vulnerabilities if not designed correctly. 

As we mentioned in our previous blog, one of the causes why cooling towers do not work properly is bad design. This issue is leading to the topic of risk management. For this purpose, we will limit our discussion to the design of the tower and how to analyze issues that otherwise could result into a risk and endanger achievement of objectives such as performance, energy saving, …

Hence, it is important to identify potential risks. Early detection of risk is important because it is easier, less costly, and less disruptive to make changes and correct work efforts during the earlier, rather than the later, phases of the project.

Said that, it's important to define a risk management strategy that:

•  identifies and analyzes risks,
• manages the identified risks,
• implements a mitigation/contingency plan when needed.

⁽¹⁾ Weaknesses or flaws in the design process. Vulnerability can be seen as that part of a system, explicitly or implicitly, where security measures are either absent, reduced or compromised. This represents a weak point in the system, allowing an attacker to compromise the level security of the entire system.

⁽²⁾ Anything that can exploit a vulnerability to cause damages. Alerting?

⁽³⁾ The potential for loss, damage or destruction as a result of a threat exploiting a vulnerability. Here we have uncertainty which can result in a positive or negative result, regardless of our will or capacity.