Every project we face will address different risks in the day-to-day operations or at long term. Even the most carefully planned project can encounter problems and unexpected risks. Some will be good and some bad. Some minor some bigger. But this does not mean we should give up, when we are facing unexpected problems!
Once your organization has identified the existing hazards and their associated risks, further evaluation for risk treatment options become possible.

Your ability to mitigate risk allows you to proactively acknowledge and accommodate risks. Getting rid of risk altogether is not a feasible solution, but by measuring risk, your organization can decide how to deal with each kind of risk the best way.

Risk management is the process of determining an acceptable level of risk, calculating the current level of risk, and then either accepting the risk, avoid the risk or taking steps to reduce to acceptable level of risk.

In this post, we will introduce the five different strategies to mitigate risk, which we will dike deeper intro in the following posts.

Mitigation

Mitigation refers to any action or sustained effort undertaken to reduce a hazard risk through the reduction of the likelihood and/or the consequence component of that hazard’s risk. In other words, mitigation seeks to either reduce the likelihood of occurring or reduce the impact of the consequences if it occurs.

Mitigations goals

Mitigation goals refer to the different methods of dealing with risk. When considering the mitigation options suitable for treating a risk, several general goals classify the outcome that your strategy may seek:

1) Risk likelihood reduction

2) Risk consequence reduction

3) Risk avoidance

4) Risk acceptance

5) Risk transfer, sharing or spreading

OBS: Most strategies are most of the time not a clean risk consequence reduction or likelihood reduction but a combination between the goals!

Keep in touch to learn more about the 5 different goals in the upcoming posts, where we will zoom in at the specific goal.

Sources:

Coppola, D. P. (2015): “Introduction to international disaster management”