The Oxford English dictionary defines risk as “a situation involving exposure to danger.”  That definition is fine but it leaves open the concept of exposure to danger.  I see this definition more like the discussion of what is Spider-Man’s Spidey-Sense?  Yes, we know it alerts him that a bad guy just threw a pumpkin shaped bomb at Spider-Man, but does it also leave a small buzzing in the back of his head when the stock market is down?  What about just before a company starts dumping toxic waste into his community’s drinking water?  Are these risks not worthy of the activation of his Spidey-Sense?  Or much more likely the Spidey-Sense is focused on one type of risk when it is applied in one particular way.  I like to use this example to demonstrate two things. One risk is very complex and two my best friend will still yell at me when I miss represent superheroes’ powers to prove a point.  

Now that we know risk covers so many different aspects of life that even a radioactive spider can not completely measure it, we need to find a definition that can best represent it.  I personally like the definition that we find on Wikipedia.  “Risk is the possibility of something bad happening.”  This definition encompasses risk’s maliciousness and is not specific to what this “bad” thing is.  This wonderfully simple and easy definition can be expanded to my definition of risk: The uncertainty of something happening and it having a positive or negative effect on an individual or group or thing is the concept of risk.  In my definition of risk there is nothing left hanging as to need other definitions or clarification on what is risk.  Where is this something that will get you an eye roll at any party that you try to wow your guests with, it does include one key aspect, and that is uncertainty.  Risk is not the oncoming storm or the stock that drops, nor is it the chance of you throwing a book across the room in frustration at the roundabout way explaining risk.  Risk is the  chance of these things happening and the outcome of the storm damage or the loss in your stock portfolio, it is even the hole in the wall that heavy book made.  Risk is both the changes and the outcome.  This means that risk is the threat of something happening, the vulnerability to a negative outcome, the impact that this will have, and the adaptive capacity the symptom as a whole had to overcome the negative effects.  This in the Emergency and Disaster Management field is called the calculation of risk, and is written out mathematically here:

When using a mathematical equation to solve for a complex and arbitrary concept, often times logical reasoning and proportional reactions are used.  This is where risk is unlike simple concepts.  If risk was such a logical concept then it would be easy to understand and I wouldn’t have had to spend the majority of my life studying it.  However, it does not always follow a logical step by step function nor does it build a reaction base of proportional response.  Risk can be chaotic and extremely difficult to predict.  The uncertainty of risk is a concept that I will get into later but for now just understand that there will always be parts of risk that there is no way of measuring during a calculation of risk.  

In the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union had to calculate what the other was going to do if challenged.  Generals in the United States came up with operational plans for every circumstance building proportional responses using perfect logical reasoning.  “If we do this, then they will do this.”  As the story goes there was a person sitting in the back of the room that stands up and says “what if they don’t do that, but instead do something different?”  The concept of not acting in the military doctrine of proportional response was unique to this kind of military operations but still a valid point.  When we think we know exactly what our opponent will do, we can only blame ourselves when they don’t.  This concept was later used to justify the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).  Overly simplified this is if anyone does anything no one can escalate or we will kill us all.  Scary in Global Nuclear War but in the understanding of risk it is important.  In this circumstance what is known is the amount and capability of each opponent but not how they perceive each other’s actions.  Making the outcome all or nothing.  In terms of risk, this kind of binary conclusion is not as useful.  The uncertainty of the situation makes percentages of possibilities instead of absolute.  Keep this in mind as we work through all the components of risk and know there will always be uncertainty, this is part of the understanding of risk and does not run the calculator outright but instead shows us where we might need to do more research.  

These blog posts offer a unique approach to understanding the nuances of risk and how to manage it. By breaking down risk into a mathematical equation and exploring the many variables involved, you readers will gain a better understanding of risk, hopefully empowering you to make more informed decisions and better manage the uncertainty and risks associated with the emergency and disaster management field. Through these this I hope that you will be able to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of risk and how to use it to your advantage in disaster operations or daily life.

In these blog post the use of the word community is used to mean the person, group, landmass, or company that is affected.  In this way you can use these calculations of risk on whatever you want.  Risk exists everywhere and in everything we do.  The calculations in these blog posts can be used for financial risk, personal risk, or emergency management risk.  There are fundamental variables of threat, vulnerability, impact and adaptive capacity.  These fundamental variables can be broken down into more valuable ones that better fit your needs.  How to do this and explanations of this will be shown in later blog posts.  

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed my thought on What is Risk.

by Jonathan Ore 26 Feb 2024