Defining guidelines for the application of the marginal life saving costs principle for risk regulation

An optimal allocation of societal resources for life saving activities is guaranteed by deriving acceptance criteria for risk to life from efficiency considerations based on the marginal life saving costs principle. The Life Quality Index (LQI) can be used to quantify the societal willingness to pay for a marginal increase in life safety. The LQI net benefit criterion is the state-of-the-art method to establish quantitative risk acceptance criteria, being applicable to all areas where resources for life saving activities have to be allocated. Yet for the application of the LQI principle to real-world regulatory decisions, clear guidelines are missing on how the assessment of conformity with societal preferences has to be performed. Problems arise especially when costs and benefits of a safety relevant decision accrue at different points in time and need to be discounted before comparison. Also in many cases the time horizon of the decision is not clearly defined. In the present paper we focus on the choice of time horizon for acceptance criteria. The aim of the discussion is to specify clear guidelines for a consistent application of the LQI net benefit criterion for regulatory purposes.