How do we identify local risks?
Risk is the chance that something could go wrong, lead to harm, loss, or any unwanted outcome. Understanding risk is essential because it helps us to prepare for potential problems and make safer choices.
In the UK, the government creates a National Risk Register (NRR). The NRR is the government’s assessment of the most serious risks facing the UK and looks at the likelihood and potential impact of each risk happening.
Click on the button below to explore the national risk register.
The National Risk Register includes lots of different risks, but not all of them will impact Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. For this reason, the Local Resilience Forum creates a Community Risk Register (CRR). The CRR focuses on the risks which are likely to impact our local area.
How do we measure risk?
It can be challenging to measure risk, as they can have a wide range of impacts. These impacts can affect individuals, businesses, regions or the whole country. This means that to prepare for each of the risks, we need to know which ones are most likely to happen, and which risks will have the largest impact. This is done by assessing five different categories.
Click on each of the assessment criteria below to learn more:
- Deaths directly linked to the incident.
- Casualties resulting from the incident (including illness, injury, and psychological impacts).
- Evacuation and shelter requirements.
Considers Public Outrage and Public Perception.
- Public outrage aims to capture the sense of public outrage after an event has occurred.
- Public Perception assesses the sense of personal vulnerability resulting from exposure to the risk.
- The total cost to the economy (direct and indirect).
- Other costs such as a reduction in tourism and reduced working hours.
Disruption to normal patterns of the daily lives of the public. The twelve sub-categories or elements that are assessed are:
- Transport
- Fuel
- Gas and Electricity
- Food
- Water
- Health
- Social Care
- Government
- Finance
- Communications
- Emergency Services (Ambulance, Police, Fire and Rescue and Access to 999 services)
- Criminal Justice
- Education
Impact on the environment such as:
- Pollution
- Rubble
- Debris
The impact for each category is measured on a score from 1 (little or no impact) to 5 (catastrophic impact). These scores are then combined, including a weighting for the highest impacts, which creates an overall impact score for each individual risk.
These risks are then categorised as ’Very High’, ‘High’, ‘Medium’ and ‘Low’.
Community Risk Register
This section includes some of the risks which could affect Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. All of the risks are grouped into seven different categories.
Expand the content below by selecting each risk category to explore the individual risks and their scores:
Very high
- Severe Space Weather
- Storms
- High temperatures and heatwaves
- Low Temperatures and Snow
- Coastal Flooding
- Fluvial Flooding
- Poor Air Quality
- Groundwater Flooding
High
- Volcanic Eruption
- Surface Water Flooding
- Drought
- Land Movement
Medium
- Earthquake
Very high
- Railway Accident
- Accident Involving High Consequence Dangerous Goods
- Simultaneous loss of all fixed and mobile forms of communication
- Failure of the National Electricity Transmission System (NETS)
- Regional failure of the electricity network
- Failure of Gas Supply Infrastructure
- Major Fire
- Major Pollution of Surface Waters and Groundwater
High
- Major Social Care Provider Business Failure
- Insolvency of supplier(s) of critical services to the public sector
- Insolvency affecting fuel supply
- Large passenger vessel accident
- Aviation Collision
- Malicious drone incident
- Disruption of space based services
- Loss of Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) services
- Technological Failure of a Systemically Important Retail Bank
- Technological failure of a UK critical Financial Market Infrastructure
- Accidental fire or explosion at an onshore major hazard (COMAH) site
- Accidental large toxic chemical release from an onshore major hazard (COMAH) site
- Accidental Fire or Explosion at an onshore Major Accident Hazard Pipeline
- Accidental work-related (laboratory) release of a hazardous pathogen
- Water infrastructure failure or loss of drinking water
- Food Supply Contamination
- Wildfire
- Local Accident on Motorways and Major Trunk Roads
- Fire or Pollution at a Waste Site
- Radioactive release by a visiting nuclear powered vessel to Portsmouth & Southampton Ports
- Accidental Release of a Biological Substance
Medium
- Major Maritime Pollution
- Incident (grounding / sinking) of a vessel blocking a major port
- Radiation exposure from transported, stolen or lost goods
- Accidental Fire or Explosion at an Onshore Fuel Pipeline
- Reservoir/Dam Collapse
- Building Collapse or Bridge Closure/Collapse
- Incidents Involving Piers and Similar Maritime Structures
- Removal of Explosive Ordnance (EO)
- Incidents Involving Piers and Similar Maritime Structures
Low
- Failure of a supplier of CNI chemicals
- Radiation release from overseas nuclear site
Very high
- Animal disease – major outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease
- Animal disease – major outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza
- Animal disease – major outbreak of African Swine Fever
- Major outbreak of plant pest – Agrilus planipennis
Medium
- Animal disease – major outbreak of African horse sickness
- Major outbreak of plant pest – Xylella fastidiosa
Very high
High
- Industrial Action – Public Transport
- Industrial Action – firefighters
- Industrial action – fuel supply
- Industrial Action of Emergency Service Workers
- Widespread Industrial Action or Disruptive Action Short of a Strike
Medium
- Industrial Action – Prison Staff
- Reception and integration of British Nationals arriving from overseas
Very high
- Terrorist attacks in venues and public spaces
- CBRN attacks (Small, Medium, Large scale)
- Conventional Attacks on Infrastructure
High
- Terrorist attacks on transport
Medium
- Northern Ireland related Terrorism
- Strategic hostage taking
- Assassination of a high-profile public figure
Low
- International Terrorist Attack
To view all of these risks on the matrix, please download the community risk register matrix using the button below.
This website contains more information on each of the very high risks. Explore each risk category (using the menu or homepage) to learn more about what the risk is, what the local resilience forum does to prepare for the risk, and how you can prepare for the risk.
