Risk and its risks: discussion of ‘Risk – a commentary’ by D.G. Carmichael

The nature of risk needs to be more clearly understood. Risk management could be tightened as a discipline, particularly by adopting an underlying foundation of systems thinking. Risk management, even when well done, has inherent limitations, and these should be well understood, particularly those arising from modelling, completeness, correlation effects, and the often-great uncertainties in estimates of both likelihood and consequence. Modelling is centrally important: both this and risk must be intimately related to decision-making. A clear understanding of this connection is essential to sound work in the discipline.