 |  |
|
Vital Records: Appendix 5: Risk Assessment
Completing a Risk Assessment involves determining the probability of a
particular disaster occurring in your office and the effects that
disaster may have on the operations of your office or your records. A
Risk Assessment also helps you determine which protection method is best
for your records. Although this is largely an exercise in probability,
since we never know what will happen, it will narrow the scope of
protection methods and allow for some early disaster preparedness. There are 3 basic steps to completing a risk assessment:
First you will need to identify the 5-6 most important risks to your
particular office. Not all offices are likely to face the same risks,
although fire and water damage are the most common. For example, an
office that deals in research may have the added risk of sabotage,
whereas an office dealing strictly with technology and computers would
have a far greater risk of losing information in a power outage.
After you have identified the top risk factors in your office, list the
individuals who can help you with recovery from that risk. This could
include maintenance staff, public affairs, security personnel, technical
systems staff, etc. If no one in your office has the necessary skills,
consider contracting the services of a vendor.
There are three categories of disasters:
Second, you will need to determine the level of impact each disaster will
have on your office and the ability of your office to continue
operations. Use the below Impact Rating Scale to assist you with placing
a numerical value to the level of impact. For example if you believe the
risk will cause office operations to be interrupted for only 3 hours,
then the Impact Rating would be given a 1.
Once you have determined the level of impact you will need to identify the probability of the disaster actually happening. In this area, flooding or earthquakes are very probable and would more than likely receive a rating of high (10 probability points), whereas hurricanes are very unlikely and would receive a probability of low (1 probability point). The below listed Probability Rating Scale should be used to determine the probability.
The last step is to determine the risk factor. This is done by taking the Impact Rating and multiplying it with the Probability Rating.
The resulting sum will be your Risk Factor and can be used when you are
determining methods of protection. If fire and water damage have high
risk factors, look into the best protection methods from that sort of
damage. If explosions are a high risk factor for your office, determine
your protection methods (and we suggest off-site storage) based on that
factor. If you have any questions regarding the risk factor or the risk
assessment process overall, please contact Records Management Services at
543-6512.
If you are uncertain which types of disasters/risks may be prevalent in
your area, the following questions may assist you in the identification
of potential risks.
Climate
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Modified: July 15, 2004 |
Records Management Services |
|
