A while back I gave a presentation on risk; ‘Risky Business – the business of risk.’ I was able to present it a few times and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was intentionally emotive ‘Disaster is lurking and we will save you’. I filled it with selected statistics for effect; Over 100 people are killed by trees every year is the United States – but 900 people are also killed by SHEEP. You have a 1:20,000,000 chance of being killed by a tree and 1:6 chance of dying from cardiovascular disease.

At one stage I had the data on how many people were killed each year by frozen peas, but in my excitement, I lost it – I can no longer recall the numbers, but needless to say, we should all fear and respect frozen peas!

When it comes to risk, there is actual risk and perceived risk and gap between them can vary greatly.  Just before Christmas a tree fell on a parked car in Dunedin, no one was hurt but it was reported as a disaster – “what if, it almost, it could have” etc. etc.  This is an example of perceived risk.  In terms of actual risk, last year in NZ, 150 people were harmed by rabbits and 10 were harmed by marshmallows, actual harm – not perceived, almost or nearly, but actual harm requiring medical attention.

So, what is risk and how do we put context around it?

A quick look at Wikipedia will inform you that risk involves two components; the magnitude of the potential loss (L), and the probability (p) that the loss will occur. From there you can undertake a risk assessment to determine what the risk is for a given event occurring.

Determining risk is relatively easy, for ‘Risky Business’, I came across over 70 different risk assessment methodologies – all similar but slightly different. So, determining risk is relatively easy but working out whether that risk is acceptable or tolerable is harder – and here things start to get interesting. Tolerable or acceptable risk is determined by a society or authorities view of the social, political, and economic cost of a given event occurring.

Forget risk – enter Social Science.

In their book ‘Freakonomics’ [a fine read, if you get the chance], Dubner and Levitt reference Peter Sandman. Sandman is a ‘Risk Communicator’ and he talks of risk in three areas: scaring people who are ignoring something that is legitimately dangerous and risky; calming down people who are freaking out over something that’s not risky; and guiding people who are freaking out over something that is legitimately risky. To accomplish all this, Sandman has the useful equation: Risk = Hazard + Outrage.

Sandman focuses on the outrage but not the hazard itself; Outrage Management. According to Sandman, ‘reducing outrage is a socially valuable thing to do only if the outrage is misplaced’. If you have the time download and read, Responding to Community Outrage: Strategies for Effective Risk Communication, and/or his Six Principal Strategies of Reducing Outrage (links below).

As a defender of trees (?) I have tried to manage Risk through context; you are 28 times more likely to be struck by lightning, 75 times more likely to win the lottery and/or 600 times more likely to be killed on the road than being killed by a tree while in a public space etc. But maybe a better investment would be to try and manage the outrage; “the higher the outrage, the less willing people are to leave the control in your hands.”

Frozen peas might kill you and marshmallows can harm you but people are not scared of them – people are scared of trees – to risk manage our trees we need to become better at managing people.

http://www.psandman.com/index-OM.htm
http://www.psandman.com/handouts/sand42.pdf