Integrated Risk Assesment

Overview of the RLRMC Approach

The term ‘integrated’ is often used by people without explaining to which type of integration they are referring.  Separate work devoted to chronic lack of access through ‘development’, risk of loss of access through ‘disaster risk reduction’, and response to loss of access through ‘humanitarian’ teams often characterize the lack of consideration for mainstreaming of disasters and climate change into development.  Likewise, often only individual hazards or other risk factors are considered, only past causes and effects of losses are considered, only individual spatial units of systems that could be vertically or horizontally integrated are considered, only individual sectors or subsectors of an affected system are considered, or only views of particular stakeholders are considered. Not all contexts require all types of integration, but methodologies should start by considering which types of integration are most relevant for the context being addressed. To do so, RLRMC methodologies get contributions from representatives of all stakeholders with relevant information toward scenario-based projections of present and future potential chronic extensive and acute intensive lack of livelihood and basic social service (BSS) access for all context-relevant exposure, vulnerabilities, and capacities related to potential daily, seasonal, and extreme hazards.

Accordingly, integrated risk identification methodologies involve developing a database of secondary data and collected primary data regarding the interplay between different idiosyncratic and/or covariate spatial, risk factor, sectoral, or other development priority factors in likely scenarios of causes and effects of different levels of lack of livelihood or basic social service (BSS) access for relevant affected vulnerable groups at some present or future date.  Integrated risk analysis methodologies then enable synthesis of agreed-upon causes and effects as risk knowledge. For any aspects on which disparity prevents risk knowledge from being agreed upon, more information is obtained to iteratively bridge gaps.  At a specified time or level of knowledge of the different levels of risk of possible loss of life or access to livelihoods and basic social services (BSS) in different scenarios, the stakeholder representatives then prioritize the relative importance of these levels of possible losses.  In this integrated risk assessment process, they determine which such risk levels are acceptable and which are unacceptable.  For those that are considered acceptable, the implication is that preparedness capacities will need to be developed for effective response to minimize resulting disruptions if these losses are realized. For those that are considered unacceptable, the implication is that these risks will be considered relative to other development priorities so that livelihood, BSS, and risk mitigation and adaptation strategies can lower the risks to levels considered acceptable.