How do you identify and mitigate hazards?

While this community has a focus upon traditional FEMA/DHS hazards, I’ve applied the over arching concepts and tactical actions (in preparedness and mitigation) to business activities. The topics range from cyber hacking to key employee loss to on the job accidents etc. It’s important to consider these things for a small business owner as they can financially sink a business.

There is always a solution. As professionals we have to look holistically at risk, apply judgement and rate the possible scenarios from worst to best. We have to let our clients know of those consequences and the mitigation strategies what's the cost and how long to implement.

Related to Hazard Identification, we may use the methodology from the ISO 45001:2018: - Understanding the organization and its context, including the internal and external issues. The hazard usually follow these issues - Establish, implement and maintain a process for hazard identification, which shall take into account but not limited to: 1) the way how the work/operation is organized and processed/performed 2) the social factors 3) the culture in the organization 4) routine and non-routine activities (usually, the hazard come from non-routine activities; but please do not forget the routine activities); 5) past relevent incidents and potential emergency situations, both internal and external 6) people (both internal and external)

When a potential risk is discovered, put the scenarios through a critically matrix. Provide the facts and scenarios to the decision makers. Let them make the decision on how to engineer the risk, accept, or transfer the risk.

The critical part of mitigation is identifying the risk and as stated above the impact. Formal criticality matrices are essential in determining the major impact areas/equipment. The criticality matrix is the easy part. Identifying ALL the risk and impacts to those items can be difficult. It might not be a loss to the critical item but follow on losses from small items causing a critical outage. The tolerance for pain is also key must be decided by the leadership early on.

Mitigation is actually about impacts, not hazards. And impacts are about exposures and vulnerabilities. Hazards themselves, especially natural hazards, are difficult if not impossible to mitigate. (How do you keep a storm from intensifying?) But the impact these hazards have on communities arises not just from the frequency, proximity, or severity of the hazard, but what we did or did not do to reduce our exposure or vulnerability to it. Too often, mitigation is confused with preparedness. Ideally, effective mitigation efforts reduce the need for preparedness and response by eliminating exposures or reducing vulnerabilities.

Generally, the following process applies: 1. Conduct a Hazard Inventory: Create a comprehensive list of potential hazards. 2. Gather Data/Information: Collect relevant data/information for each hazard on the inventory. 3 Assess Probability/Frequency of each hazard. 4 Evaluate Potential Impacts: Consider the physical, social, economic, and environmental consequences. 5. Determine the areas and communities that are most vulnerable to specific hazards. 6. Engage Stakeholders: Involve relevant stakeholders in the hazard identification process. 7. Prioritize Hazards based on their potential impact, likelihood of occurrence, and capacity for mitigation. 8. Document/Update: Maintain a hazard inventory that is reviewed on a regular basis.

Many mitigation efforts fail before they start due to analysis paralysis. Identifying and comparing options makes sense if it doesn't impede decisions and actions. One of the most cost-effective mitigation strategies involves transparent hazard mapping. The more people know about hazards and risks, the better equipped they are to make decisions about their own exposure and vulnerability. But even this takes courage. Many communities oppose hazard mapping for fear knowledge about these features will reduce property values or increase insurance premiums. This assumes the information is otherwise unavailable. However, we are already seeing the effects of information asymmetries involving climate risk on insurance access and affordability.

These benefits can be quantified, and provide a compelling argument to invest in hazard mitigation. For example the National Institute of Building Sciences found in its 2019 report “Mitigation Saves” that on average every $1 invested in federal grants saves $6 in disaster losses. This 6:1 number has been embraced by the emergency management community and has helped garner further interest and investment in hazard mitigation grant programs. Most notable is FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. Other hazard mitigation investments provide similar, or even higher Benefit-Cost Ratios. For example, adopting the latest building codes saves $11 per $1 invested.

Alot of professionals in the industry will do the minimum year after year to satisfy the code requirements or contract obligations when identifying hazards. Company ABC they already identified the risk and calculated the montenary value of that deficiency i dont need to do more. I can just follow along turn in my report year after year. But to truly make a difference you have to provide your absolute best whenever you are involved in a project mitigation. The benefits will come might not be right away but they will come. If you have not identified a solution or provided additional perspective why are you there ? what value have you added.

Hazard mitigation is a great opportunity for local government officials to engage with the community and communicate findings, and assist or provide resources to mitigate the hazards.