Concepts and definitions

To fully understand the concepts of risk situations, emergency plans and crisis management, you need to understand the following concepts:

• Danger, issues, risk and accidents

  Hazard refers to the intrinsic capacity of a situation to cause a harmful effect (a toxic product, fire, etc.). For a risk to exist, the hazard must be a potential source of damage to a stake (human, environmental, material). Risk is therefore the result of an ability to reason about the foreseeable consequences of a hazard in the future.

  An event with proven damage, or consequences, on a stake (again, human, environmental or material) is called an "accident". Note that the term "accident" generally refers...