How to further develop the United Nations’ risk assessment guidance using current risk science knowledge

The United Nations (UN) uses considerable resources on risk assessments, to enhance the understanding and management of risk, reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience. The UN recommendations and guidance documents have a considerable impact on how risk assessments are conducted and used in different countries. The quality of these recommendations and documents is therefore very important. The present paper performs a review of this quality from a risk science perspective, building on recent documents developed by the Society for Risk Analysis and related scientific work. We conclude that the UN recommendations and documents provide solid guidance on many key features of risk assessments, but there is a potential for improvements in some areas, particularly in relation to the way risk is described. Traditional risk matrices are still promoted, despite their weaknesses in reflecting risk. Potential surprises are not given sufficient attention in the risk assessments.