1: What Is Risk?

The pursuit of effective risk assessment and management practice and process is an enduring feature of public, private and academic sector working. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of academic and practice-based texts written on the topic, and some readers will be very well versed and knowledgeable on ‘the basics’. However, with any text on risk assessment and risk management it is essential to first discuss and describe these ‘basics’ – i.e. the things that everybody seems to know but which are often poorly defined, but which are also fundamental to our knowledge and our shared understandings of risk assessment and management. For the reader who is less experienced in the field, this focus on the basics is possibly more important as it provides the foundational knowledge needed to understand and build up to more complex constructs later in the book. For the experienced risk professional, this chapter may serve to clarify and re-learn or re-focus back to these basics.