Risk Management

Basic Risk and Response Cycle

Application: Risk and Response Cycle with intergration of Satellite technology and smartphone (see Learning Task)

SDG11: Sustainable Cities and Communities - Learning Resource supports the SDGs - UN-Guidelines

Risk management has two main tasks:

• determine and calculate the risk and
• organize the response to the identified risk:
  • Improve the preparedness to an event,
  • Reduce the probability of an event by risk mitigation activities,
  • Reduce the impact of an event

See Risk Management Content Matrix RM

Response Time

When someone has a heart attack or a stroke the medical response is urgent in comparison to a broken leg that has in general a long time span in which medical response will not have a serious impact on the health condition of the patient. For the link between risk and response to the available time span is crucial for the assessment of the impact on an hazardous event. Going back to example of a patient with a heart attack, the main question is

   "How long does it take until an ambulance with medical support is available?"

People living close to the health care facility have a better response time in an case of emergency than people living in rural areas. This leads to that fact that risk depends on spatial allocation of resources and distance of an event to the resource that can be used for risk mitigation (see Spatial risk management).

Main Applications of Risk Management

• Risk Management in Finance
• Environmental Risk Management
• Risk Management in the Health Domain
• Global Challenges of Risk Management: Climate Change and Planetary Boundaries are linked to economy, health, and social, cultural and technical beliefs
• Vulnerability assessmentVulnerability Assessment]] is necessary to improve the preparedness to certain risks.

Learning Task

Artificial lights can be detected from satellites. Light emission during night is a proxy variable for the availability of electricity after disasters.

• (Risk & Response Cycle) On this page on right you find an example of an extended risk and response cycle, with a focus on satellite technology and smartphones. Take your personal expertise as starting point and create your own cycle for a domain of your choice.
• (Planetary Boundaries) Approach risk management from the angle of planetary boundaries and consumption of planetary resources. Create a first risk mitigations concept that might work in your family, school, university, town or region. What are the requirements and constraints you can identify?
• (Machine Learning) Explain how Machine Learning (ML) can be used to assess risk, allocate resources according to risk and assess the efficiency of the resources to reduce the risk for a specific community. Discuss also ethical aspect in the context of Machine Learning and Risk Management.
• (Sustainable Development Goals) Consider people in developing countries that battle to survive the next day, week, month. Describe the challenges for long-term goals in the context of climate change and the planetary boundaries (see Sustainable Development Goals SDG of United Nations). Explain how Risk Management could contribute to sustainable communities and sustainable development in general!
• (Systems Thinking) If we apply systems thinking in risk management, we will now look on a basic case, where someone living in a semi-arid region will cut down trees for fire wood or for a campfire. Systems analysis will tell us, that cutting down trees will increase erosion of soil and it will cause long-term food problem of agricultural production.
  • Analyze what you would do with the last trees, if you are risk literate and you know about this dependencies, but it gets $2^{o}C$ during night?
  • What are you implication for short-term and long-term risk management?
• (Risk Management for Electricity as Resource): Light emission during night is a proxy variable for the availability of electricity after disasters. Describe the procedure of assessment from the analysis of satellite images (before/after the event), to assessment of the impact of missing electricity for health service delivery, communication or provision of services in general. How would you assess the vulnerability in your hometown in comparison to other areas in the world?
• (COVID-19) Analyze the challenges of risk management in epidemiology and identify different phases:

• direct implementation of risk mitigations strategies,
• assessment of the impact of risk mitigation strategies and the improvement of the strategies,
• the comparison different risks for the health system, economy, society, ... and explain how the risks are linked, e.g. improvement of protective measures, workflow transformations and other elements of Risk Literacy did not work good enough and a lockdown created economic impacts, ...

• Tailored Wikibooks Learner have different requirements, constraints and prerequisites. Learning resources that included for one learner might be superfluous for an other learner, because he or she might know the topic very well. Create Wikibook tailored for the learner is an innovative tool to cover this needs. It is applicable in any domain for learning and capacity building. In the context of Risk Management we focus on capacity building and learning and create or adapt a Wikibook tailored to the individual exposure to certain risks and individual skills to respond to the risk.

Resources

• Risk Management - Content Matrix
• Risk Literacy describes the individual skill/expertise to manage the risk
• Spatial risk management, risk vary in different geolocation, spatial risk management takes the spatio-temporal variations of risk into account
• Agricultural Water Pollution Management
• Systems Thinking and Risk Economy, environment, public health, social and cultural conditions for risk are connected and risk mitigation activities in Systemic Risk)
• Disaster Management considers risk management for disasters. Disaster Risk Reduction aims to reduce the damage caused by natural hazards like earthquakes, floods, droughts and cyclones, that cause a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society. Disasters involve widespread human, material, economic or environmental impacts, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. The systemic risk is managed in different phases from immediate response after an event and long-term preparedness measures and capacity building to reduce the vulnerability.
• Tailored Wikibooks to let the learners adapt provided Wikibooks according to their needs and skills.
• Vulnerability assessment is required to determine the key assets, that must be protected by risk mitigation strategies and may lead to better preparedness.

See also

• Decision Making
• Resource Management
• Origin of Course Development
• High risk research
• Machine learning
• Project Management/Risk
• Emergency Management
• Open Educational Resources for Risk management - Reach People provide access to risk mitigation strategies.
• UNOCHA United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
• Grand Challenges
• Risk Literacy
• ICT Literacy
• COVID-19
• Applied toxicity of chemicals
• One Health