Belmont State Bank - Risk Assessment



Belmont State Bank - Risk Assessment

Introduction

Risk assessment is a part of a comprehensive risk governance process. Risk governance is a systematic approach toward coping with risks under participation of all relevant actors—government, companies, the scientific community, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the general public. Risk assessment is a tool for gaining knowledge about risks. It aims to identify and explore the type, intensity, and likelihood of the consequences related to an activity or event.

Discussion

Risk assessment is the first step in environmental risk analysis, a tool designed to assist decision makers in making environmental policy decisions. Risk assessment is meant to provide a science-based methodology with clearly defined steps to give decision makers the necessary background on which to base their decisions. Risk assessment is intended to allow decision makers to separate the fact-based elements of environmental issues from “political,” value-based decisions. The extent to which it is able to do this is debated, but risk assessment has been widely adopted by national and international institutions as a model for helping decision makers formulate policy on complex scientific issues.

In the field of nanotechnology, risk assessment is difficult, due to the fact that there is no clear definition of nanotechnology. It is still unclear which research and development activities produce new technological phenomena that are related to unknown impacts, and therefore deserves a carefully performed risk assessment. At present there is a certain consensus that there is demand for a risk assessment of engineered nanomaterials, especially synthetic nanoparticles. In this respect, the exposure rate of a person or the environment is an important aspect in assessing risks related to nanoparticles (Renn, 2008).

Risk Identification

Risk denotes a concept that combines a specific adverse or harmful outcome of an action with the possibility of occurrence of this outcome. Risk identification will ...