What is the benefit of approaching risk management from a governance point of view?

Risk governance provides a process: a comprehensive and harmonized guidance for early identification and handling of risks, involving multiple relevant stakeholders. The inclusive approach is useful to frame, assess, evaluate, manage and communicate important risk issues, often marked by complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. The process must be generic and adaptable, so as to be tailored to various risks and organisations. When it is fully applied, it comprises a series of 'steps' including the identification, assessment, evaluation, management and communication in a broad societal context.

Risk governance also provides some normative statements about what is 'good' risk management, i.e. risk management for societal benefit.

NanoRIGO web-platform is designed as a live guidance document for the implementation of the NRGF that will include tools, data and other specific resources for the risk governance for nanomaterials. This web-platform can be used by different types of users (such as large industries, NGOs, regulators or SMEs) with different levels of expertise.

The web-platform has been designed in order not to store any user information, as it can be sensitive. For that reason, the main workflow of the risk governance analysis (see section 4.c) has been developed to guide the user through a number of steps and the results obtained by individual tools must be stored by the user. Depending on the user necessities, the platform will find available tools and information for a complete risk governance process. Results will be provided by external tools, and the platform can then help to interpretate those results.

RESOURCES

  • Platform guidelines: Tutorials and documents for helping users on using the different sections of the NanoRIGO web-platform.
  • General information: Useful and interesting documents for the nanomaterials risk governance.
  • Success stories: Real examples of usages of the web-platform successfully.
  • Tools and databases manuals: Extra information for using external and NanoRIGO-developed tools.

COMMUNICATION RISK PLATFORM

Objective

The main idea is to guide, help and assist users during the risk governance process for nanomaterials. This platform will act as a repository of tools, data and other resources found or developed by NanoRIGO.

  1. Pre-assessment
    • Defining the issue and objective
    • Understanding the specific context and culture
    • Exploration of matters concerns
  2. Scientific Technical Risk Assessment
    • Hazzard Assessment
    • Exposure and susceptibility/vulnerability assessment
    • Consequences assessment
  3. Opinion, Concern and Risk Perception Assessment
  4. Evaliation
    • Characterization of the risk
    • Risk acceptability
    • Decision
  5. Management
  6. Monitoring and Feedback