Risk Management in the Outdoor Adventure Sports

a big step beyond Safety…

Quoting Kurt Diemberger, “in any endeavour, risk is necessary to achieve the objectives”… on the other hand, there is no adventure without risk. Hence, in the outdoor adventureous sports, risk is something that we desire and seek.

Since more than 20 years, in a number of fields (industry, health care, military…) we see the traditional Safety evolving to Risk Management. This development is of great interest for our segment of adventureous outdoor sports, since the modern Risk Management allows to overcome the limitations typical of traditional Safety (such as: an excess of procedures and interdictions, the almost obsessive focus on human liability rather than the true causes of accidents, a strategy based on building barriers instead of pro-actively handling hazards, a poor effectiveness when facing unforeseen events).

The modern Risk Management also allows to overcome the obvious deficiencies of a “do-it-yourself” practice supported only by experience and lacking a structured methodology.

Risk Management is actually a technical discipline, not a philosophy. It aims at providing knowledge and methods for an independent treatment of risks; namely,  the necessary procedures are estabished internally by one’s own free choice, hence  reducing the need of introducing formal regulations  of external origin.

The goal of modern Risk Management is not indeed to reduce risks, but precisely to manage them. The main objective is to optimize the risk/ benefit ratio of the activity. This allows the amateur sportsmam as well as the practitioner to reach high perfomances yet at a controlled (and accepted) level of risk.

Risk Management produces the  result of reducing the frequency and the severity of accidents. This also reduces the interest of lawmakers to step in the business with new standards and regulations.

The above points explain how Risk Management ultimately leads to the freedom to risk, meant as the unconditional and responsible choice of the risks we want to take and accept in our sport actiivity.

A correct risk management practice is not acquired though experience alone;  specific training  steps are needed. The  process may seem grueling, but is indeed useful for whom wishes to reach the limit of the own’s performances and is essential  for those  (amateurs or practitioners) bearing the responsibility of other people’s safety (such as, for example:  guides and instructors, organizers, leaders of clubs and associations, teachers and coaches, managers of sport facilities).

WISH TO KNOW MORE ?

–> Click HERE to download the RISK MANAGEMENT 2.0 presentation (pdf)

To start a systematic study of Risk Management in the outdoors: