Risk Management in the

Outdoors

What is Risk?
Risk is defined as the chance of something happening
that will have an impact on objectives (Standards New
Zealand 2004).
Risk is the potential to lose something of value, which
could be physical (broken bones); mental (such as
psychological stability); social (such as confidence
through embarrassment) or financial (such as loss of or
damage to possessions).
Risks can have both positive and negative outcomes

Types of Risk
Real vs Perceived

Real Risk
Real riskis the absolute risk
adjusted by the effect of safety
controls and measures.

Perceived Risk
Perceived risk is an individuals subjective evaluation of the
characteristics and
severity of risk that exists at a given moment (Priest & Baillie,
1987). The perceived risk can be close to the real risk when an
individual is experienced and/or particularly well informed.
However, a perceived risk may be far removed from the real risk
and it is this
scenario (when perceived risk is low, but real risk is high) which
most frequently leads to accidents, injuries and fatalities (Haddock,
1983).
What is most important to recognise is that it is the perceived risk
as opposed to the actual or real risk that is ultimately used to make
decisions regarding involvement in outdoor recreation situations .

What is Risk
Management?
Risk management is a systematic way of identifying,
assessing, treating and monitoring risks.
Risk management is aims to focus attention and
action where it is most needed. Key aims are to
evaluate and prioritise where things are most likely
to go wrong, what the consequences of such events
might be, and what should be done before, during
and after incidents to minimise those consequences.

Why use a Risk Management

Process?
A systematic risk management process will help an
organisation to:
effectively manage assets, events, programmes and
activities
improve the way you meet the needs of members and
other stakeholders
enhance your image and reputation.

Identifying Risk
To deal with risk in an activity, you must first
identify the hazards. Having identified the
hazards, you must then identify the causal
factors which lead to those risks becoming a
reality. Causal factors are dangers, and can be
grouped into three key areas:
-people,
-equipment,
-environment.

Casual Factors
Some of the factors in these three areas which
you as a leader need to consider include:
Peopleskills, knowledge, level of confidence,
fitness, moods, fears, tiredness, experience.
Equipmentclothing, tents, skis,
communication devices, ropes, vehicles.
Environmentweather, terrain, remoteness,
snow conditions, shelter.

Accidents
Accidents are possible from dangers in just
one of these three areas, but an accident
becomes much more likely when hazards
from the three areas interact.
As an example, consider a ski tour in steep
terrain. A peril (or possible negative
outcome) is a person falling unchecked into
trees or rocks.

The competence
difficulty model

A participant with a low level of skill and or experience will find easy
activities quite interesting, but will probably feel fear or even terror
when confronted with activities of high difficulty. On the other hand,
a highly skilled or experienced participant may be bored by easy
activities, but may find difficult activities highly adventurous.

The competence
difficulty model
It is important that leaders develop good judgement
of the experience and skill level of their participants.
It is easy for an inexperienced participant to have an
incorrect perception of the risk, in either direction.
A fearful or timid person may overestimate the risks;
fearless or confident people may well underestimate
the risks.
In particular, fearless people may not be aware of
the absolute risk, because they may not detect some
or all of the likely hazards.

The competence
difficulty model
Boredomwhere the level of challenge fails to excite even the
lowest level of interest;
Interesta low but noticeable level of interest;
Adventurea very satisfactory outcome, balancing demand and
coping ability very well;
Peak adventurethe highest level of satisfaction with a trip;
Fearwhere an individual is moderately concerned by potential
risk and has doubts about his/her ability to cope; Figure 6.1 Model
of the relationship
Terrorwhere an individuals between experience and perceived
concern about ability to survive risk. the activity is so great that it
inhibits his/her ability to act appropriately, and places the person
in some danger of ongoing psychological problems after the
ordeal is finished.