risikobasert

Risikobasert is an adjective used in risk management and related fields to describe approaches, decisions, or processes driven by assessed risk rather than fixed rules or absolute requirements. The core idea is to allocate attention and resources in proportion to the level of risk.

In practice, a risk-based approach involves identifying hazards or threats, estimating their probability and potential impact, and combining these to produce a risk level or score. Based on this scoring, organizations prioritize mitigations, monitoring, and controls. Common tools include risk matrices, probabilistic risk assessment, fault-tree analysis, and effectiveness of controls.

Used across sectors: in health care for triage and patient safety, in food safety for HACCP and regulatory compliance, in information security for prioritizing controls under ISO 27001, in construction and engineering for safety planning, in environmental management and aviation safety.

Standards and frameworks: ISO 31000 describes principles for risk management and advocates a risk-based approach; sector-specific frameworks often embed risk-based decision making (for example regulatory risk-based inspections, risk-based maintenance).

Implementation steps: define context, identify risk sources, analyze likelihood and impact, evaluate risk against tolerance, select risk treatment, implement controls, monitor, and review.

Benefits include more efficient use of resources, improved safety and compliance, better decision support. Challenges include data quality, ambiguity in risk judgments, evolving risk landscapes, and the need for governance and transparency.

Origin: the term is drawn from the English “risk-based” and is used in several Scandinavian and Germanic languages as risikobasert.