Risk management

One of the underlying principles of this training module is that most people working in development are involved in disaster management at one time or another. Even if you, as a generalist or a sectoral specialist, do not have an active role to play in some of the other disaster phases, you do play an important role when it comes to risk management. The design of development projects should include an exercise in risk management.

The overall task of risk management must include both an estimation of the magnitude of a particular risk and an evaluation of how important to us the risk is. The process of risk management therefore has two parts: risk assessment and risk evaluation. Risk assessment requires the quantification of the risk from data and understanding the processes involved. Risk evaluation is the judgment that a society places on the risks that face them in deciding what to do about them.