Above is a visualization of relative risk from the Risk Register. The Cabinet Office cautions, "Due to the nature of the risks contained within each grouping, it is not possible to represent an exact comparison but only to give an idea of the position of each group of risks relative to others, in terms of likelihood and impact."
On August 8 the British government made public for the first time its Risk Register. Most media reports focused on the relative weight given the Pandemic threat.
In its headline, the Times offered, "Flu pandemic beats terrorism and flood in official table of reasons to be fearful." The Scotsman explained, "A flu pandemic is deemed to be likely to impact on the greatest number of people, with half the population likely to become infected and leaving between 50,000 and 750,000 dead."
Given less media attention was the process of generating the Risk Register and the decision to make public its conclusions.
On March 19, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, "we will openly publish for the first time a national register of risks - information that was previously held confidentially within Government - so the British public can see at first hand the challenges we face and the levels of threat we have assessed." (Prime Minister's Office)
The United Kingdom's Cabinet Office has made the Risk Register and related materials available on its website.
To reach its conclusions the UK's National Risk Assessment process gives attention to three sources of harm:
- Natural events (hazards)
- Potential accidents (accidents)
- Malicious attacks (threats)
- Number of fatalities
- Human illness or injury
- Social disruption
- Economic damage
- Psychological response
The United Kingdom's National Risk Assessment process is related to the generation of Community Risk Registers by localities across Britain. More information on how the British advance their emergency preparedness goals is available at UK Resilience.
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