Questions Risk Managers and Risk Assessors May Address During Planning

Questions the risk manager is principally responsible for answering:

• What are the management goals and decisions needed, and how will the risk assessment help?
• What are the ecological values (e.g., entities and ecosystem characteristics) of concern?
• What is the nature of the problem and the best scale for the assessment?
• What are the policy considerations (law, corporate stewardship, societal concerns, environmental justice, intergenerational equity)?
• What precedents are set by similar risk assessments and previous decisions?
• What is the context of the assessment (e.g., industrial site, national park)?
• What resources (e.g., personnel, time, money) are available?
• What level of uncertainty is acceptable?

• What are the critical ecological endpoints and receptor characteristics?
• What is the nature of the problem: past, present, future?
• What is our state of knowledge of the problem?
• How likely is recovery, and how long will it take?
• What data and data analyses are available and appropriate?
• What are the potential constraints (e.g., limits on expertise, time, availability of methods and data)?

Relevant guidelines section(s): Text Box 2.4