ABSTRACT
Risk management is a mature process, which grew out of painful lessons learnt in high-risk industries such as military, nuclear and drug manufacture where real life/death issues had to be considered. Major disasters such as the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island provided an impetus to risk management, and it is commonplace in these arenas and has proved itself to be effective. It has also moved out into national and local government. For example, assessment of risk from flooding is now a significant part of planning approval for housing provision. Developers are required to look at historic data to see how often the land has been flooded. The authorities will specify an acceptable level of risk, for example once in 50 years, that must be demonstrated before the developer can go ahead and build. This is the essence of risk management: how likely is something to happen and what will be its impact?
