Assessing Risk

I finally finished the 367 documents that make up the NSW SKC Sea Skills assignment. At this point, I can't say I have learnt much of anything new but I am not a beginner to sea kayaking or adventure sports in general. Perhaps if I was a novice my "learnings" - a word I hate because it is not really a word but I put it in here to show that, like the youth, I too can misuse the English language - would be much more spectacular.

After 40 years of adventuring outdoors, however, I can, to use another hackneyed expression, claim that this is not my first rodeo. The trip plan part of the assignment was not too bad. I've done dozens of these before and they can be handy devices mostly on complex trips where navigation can be tricky or terrain may require alternative routes. The basic idea is to break a longer trip down into "legs," assign start and end times, note grid references or navigation parameters (handrails, backstops, checkpoints), stick the whole thing into a spreadsheet and the end result is an instant trip plan that will impress your companions when distributed ahead of time.

One of the documents that must be produced is this matrix which I have to say is the silliest piece of policy wonk work that I have ever encountered. There is just so much wrong with this idea that it is hard to even know where to start. The idea is that before the trip you all sit around and brainstorm (literally how you are instructed to fill in this document) all the things that could possibly go wrong, from untended hang-nails discovered when a paddler puts their booties on to an attack by a Great White Shark (true story). As you can imagine, that list is, depending on your level of experience (people actually have a hard time imagining something they have never encountered) and imagination pretty much infinite.

Once the risks are recorded, they are categorised according to likelihood, on a five point scale. How you determine what is "moderately" likely is beyond me and I suspect if you asked 10 different people to categorise a single risk based on likelihood you would get 10 different answers, never mind the fact that there are supposed to be only five options.

Next up for each risk rate consequence, again on a five point scale, and again, something that 10 different people would rate 10 different ways, and which undoubtedly has a large individual component. A strained muscle on a 28 year old is a much less consequential event than a strained muscle on a 78 year old, and any trip might include both ends of the spectrum. How then does one rate consequence? Perhaps add another layer to this already opaque document and rate consequence by participant?

At this point, blood is poring out of your eyes but you must persevere because the matrix is not even half way done. Each risk has to have the component inputs stratified by person, equipment, environment. Why those three? Who knows? Standard outdoor adventure risk protocols routinely use the concepts of "objective"versus "subjective" hazards, concepts that most people can intuitively understand as being out of our control (although some argue this is not the case) versus within our control. This most sensible criterion facilitates thinking about how risks might be mitigated which is, after all, what planning is all about. PA matrix seems to be more about obfuscation than clarification, however.

Next, the risk level is read off a matrix which plots the likelihood of an event against the consequence of an event and results in one of four possible risk levels: high, significant, moderate or low. This is absurd and dignifies a completely subjective assessment with a seemingly objective measure. And, even if this matrix did in some way approximate reality, a concept as hard to grasp as liquid mercury because everyone's perception of risk varies, what is a paddler to do with a risk level of high or significant? Should the trip be cancelled?

One of the most fascinating and disturbing consequences of modern life is that, in the moment, we live almost risk free. This is not strictly true as there are definite risks associated with activities like driving, but those are risks virtually everyone in society accepts or ignores so that we can continue enjoying the convenience afforded by speeding about in a motor vehicle. But as for immediate or in the moment risks, these are comparatively rare in the modern world. However, if you peruse the shopping trolley, restaurant plate, or dinner menu of almost every Australian today (possibly even your own) you would see that multiple times every day people ingest "food" that is Almost Certain (likelihood category) to have Catastrophic or Major consequences. If I plug both of these into the handy PA matrix, I end up with an activity that is deemed high risk, the highest level there is. And yet no-one blinks an eye. How is it that no-one has thought to mitigate these risks?

In reality, I think we are probably all pretty shit at accurately assessing risk. Any risk beyond immediate threat to life or limb is pretty much outside our evolutionary wheelhouse to evaluate; and then there are the known risks that we conveniently ignore so that we can go on fuelling our various addictions, our inability to accurately assess our own ability, the vagaries of environment, weather, paddling partners and the great mass of "unknown unknowns" which we can't even begin to imagine. If you throw all these things into a giant melting pot what comes out is a gelatinous morass; a slippery mess of goop impossible to fit with any degree of rigour into a cross-tabulated matrix that purports to have anything to do with risk mitigation.