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What is this phase about?
The ultimate goal of risk assessment is to enable informed risk management decisions and actions. While such decisions must be made by risk managers (rather than risk assessors), it is recommended that the risk assessment team be involved.
Risk management decisions require consideration of a suite of factors beyond risk assessment, including political, social, legal and cultural considerations, many of which may change over time.
To best integrate these factors, consumers, manufacturers/retailers, government authorities, testing companies, and other stakeholders should be allowed involvement in risk management decisions.
The risk management team must determine in a consistent and transparent manner whether the risk associated with the (mis)use (or exposure to) the product is tolerable or acceptable, typically through:
1. Measurement of the derived risk level against a predetermined/existing risk tolerance level, and/or
2. Comparison between risk assessment results of multiple products/scenarios (relative risk assessment).
The result is a value judgment as to the acceptability of the risks, and an advice concerning the decision(s) stated in the objective.
In general there will be different possible outcomes:
1. Risk is not acceptable; interventions are needed. After implementing the intervention, one should repeat the analysis to verify whether it was successful.
2. Risk is acceptable. Stop the process, but keep records of the analysis. In the future the risk may be considered unacceptable because / or there may be opportunities to reduce the risk further. This analysis will then be useful. In any case, residual risk should be communicated along with a statement about uncertainty.
3. The information is insufficient, in which case one should loop back to the beginning, find more data and repeat the process in more detail. The flowchart can be used in an iterative way.
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