On Tuesday, April 15, 2008 a five-day backcountry adventure trip in Tongariro National Park on the North Island in New Zealand ended tragically when 6 students and a teacher died. In a small country like New Zealand, where adventure activities are a part of the culture, this is a national tragedy. Our hearts go out to all of families, the school community and the members of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre (OPC).

As people deal with shock and grief there is a natural human need to question why or how such things happen. Already there are comments in the press "about whether adventure activities should be a part of school education." While understanding this as a part of the grieving process, we need to be careful not to rush to judgment about the incident. Initial indications are of an extreme and highly unusual weather event where the water level in the river rose from "0.5 cubic meter to 18 cubic meters in half an hour." In the same storm a man on horseback was killed by lightning, an extremely rare event in New Zealand. The New Zealand Weather Service has indicated that it initially did not release information about the possibility of thunderstorms that day.

OPC is one of the most respected outdoor programs in New Zealand and has a superb safety record. I had the privilege of visiting OPC in December 2002 as a keynote speaker at the 1st International Risk Management Conference for outdoor educators in New Zealand and found that in many ways the kiwis were way ahead of North American programs in their structural approaches to risk management. It is well-integrated into the fabric of their programming.

This past summer a friend was in Colorado and had just finished a multi-pitch climb. He was hiking back down to his car when a small boulder dislodged and careened into the back of his leg, breaking both tibia and fibula in multiple places and doing massive tissue damage to his lower leg. After multiple surgeries he continues to recover. This accident was something totally unpredictable and was not the result of any mistakes on the part of my friend. In legal terms it would fall into the category of "an act of God." In tragic incidents like this one in New Zealand when there are multiple fatalities, the desire for understanding sometimes clouds people's judgment and people assume that someone made a mistake. This too could have been one of those unpredictable and therefore unpreventable situations.

Here are some updates on the incident.

Weather forecast error before fatal trip in New Zealand
April 18, 2008
The Age

Outdoors New Zealand Press Release on Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre Drownings
April 18, 2008
Press Release

NZ's Weather Service under scrutiny for drowning deaths
April 18, 2008
Scopical.com.au

Deaths in New Zealand prompt review of outdoor education
April 18, 2008
Stuff.co.nz

I agree that we cannot have an adventurous experience without experiencing risk.  It is my opinion, however, that we do a diservice to ourselves, our staff and our clients in maintaining the deceptive concept of actual vs percieved risks.

A few years ago, I wrote an article for the Brathay European Youth Seminar on Risk and Adolescence demonstrating that all risks are perceived.  For the whole article, you can go here: http://www.adventuremanagement.com/resources/general.htm

Even if we had the statistical incident data memorized, the human brain simply doesn’t think in pure probabilistic terms.  In addition, an “Actual Risk” is technically a hazard, regardless of the definition of risk that you might use, because most people see risk as potential rather probable.  

“For years our industry has relied on the “Expert-Judgment Strategy” for dealing with questions of risk.  “That one can always make a legitimate distinction between ‘actual risk’ calculated by experts and so-called ‘perceived risk’ postulated by laypersons.” (Shrader-Frechette 1990) The fact is, however, that environmental risk analysts have already concluded that “ALL risks are perceived”(Shrader-Frechette 1990).  The result is that just because we claim that a particular activity or environment is “safe” doesn’t make it so.  Furthermore, the reliance on the “Expert-Judgment Strategy” by inexperienced staff members has real operational consequences.  For example, if staff members are faced with a decision in the field that falls outside of their training or staff manual they are forced to rely on their decision making skills.  If their premise is “Is it safe?” they are really asking a highly contextual, highly subjective question.  As Wilde points out in “Target Risk” everyone has his or her own internal level of “safe.”(Wilde 1994)“

Much of the challenge that we face in our field is that we, like many of the social sciences, have borrowed much of our lexicon from other scientific fields.  Terms like “risk” and “safe” are treated as though they are binary concepts when in actuality they are highly complex fluid concepts.  I will give you an example.  Gather some of your staff into a room and ask them if they think that your particular program should be safe?  Odds are they will say "Yes!" without any hesitation.  Now ask them if they are safe in the room you are currently in.  Odds are they will hesitate and then ask, well that depends on what you mean by safe?  In the abstract concepts like risk and safe can be binary.  Made personal, they become more complex, this is true for parents, administrators and regulators as well.  It is why, after years of research, I have come to define risk, in the context of education, as “human interaction with uncertainty”.  It is a definition, which supports, rather then conflicts with, our educational missions.

Hello,

My name is Preston B. Cline, I am the founder and President of Adventure Management (www.adventuremanagement.com).  We provide Operational Risk Management Training and Consulting to educational programs throughout the world.  I have been asked by Rick Curtis to begin a Risk Management Blog related to Adventure Education.  

I want to begin by clarifying the areas that I will be discussing.  In the context of Education, Risk Management can generally be broken down into three areas:

1. Institutional Risk Management

2. Operational Risk Management

3. Theoretical Risk Management

Institutional Risk Management: Is the area usually inhabited by the Attorney, Insurance Manager, Accountant, Security Officer, Executive Director, etc.  All of the members of this group are trained to define risk as: “the potential for loss,” and to manage it by creating systems to reduce, transfer, eliminate or retain the risks they have identified.  Their primary task is to prevent the organization from encountering unnecessary hazards. For example, an intruder on campus, a violation of the law, or a gap in insurance coverage has no benefit to the students or the community, so this group will take programmatic measures to reduce the likelihood of encountering those hazards.  Sometimes, however, this group can overstep their expertise.  For example, they may have the expertise to determine if the organization should offer Canoeing, even though some of them may never have actually seen a canoe.  Following that approval some of these stakeholders may want to start dictating operational issues, such as equipment, training, technical levels, etc.  These issues are primarily the role of the Operational Risk Managers (In some small organizations these roles may be the same.) 

Operational Risk Management: Is the area inhabited by the Program Manager, Program Coordinator, Risk Manager, etc.  The members of this group are defining risk as: “Human interaction with uncertainty”.  Risk is seen as a tool that is leveraged to create an authentic educational experience.  Operational risk managers, who are working in an educational context, do not tend to ask “is this activity or experience safe?”, but rather “does this activity or experience support our educational goals?”  It is understood that unsafe activities are not supportive of the educational goals.  This allows them to focus on creating parameters around trips that are oriented toward educational outcomes.  As a result, they may tell a class of 12 year olds that canoeing is appropriate, but only on flat water, wearing certain PFD’s, with a certain canoe.

Theoretical Risk Management:  This is basically the intersection between the above two areas.  Because we are working in an educational setting and not, for example, in a financial setting, our systems are primarily human based rather then technology based.  What this means from a risk management point of view is that risk is neither simply good or bad, but the synergistic interaction between good and bad.  The more adversity a group or individual needs to overcome the more rewarding the success.  The eternal question that adventure programs face is how much adversity, how much uncertainty do we add to the mix to pursue our learning objectives?

For so long, Adventure Education has been trying to defend itself by proclaiming how safe we all are.  The truth is that we are not safe, and never will be.  Safe is a metaphysical impossibility. In trying to win this debate the only thing that we are accomplishing is the subtle chipping away at the authentic nature of our collective experiences.    

It is time that we recognize that as human beings we are always going to be interacting with uncertainty.  As we as a society advance technologically the level of uncertainty that we interact with is increasing, but most people are still managing it the same way as our primitive forefathers, through anger or fear.  If we are to address some of the looming challenges that we as a species are starting to face, we need to stop viewing risk and uncertainty as a threat, but instead as a constant.

One of the things that make Adventure Education so unique is that it uses risk and uncertainty as an educational tool.  A tool that helps people develop sustainable skills for managing the risks in there own lives.  

It is critical that we change the debate from “what will happen to my child on this trip?” to “what will happen to my child, in the coming years, if they do not take this trip?”

Let the debate begin

Preston B.  Cline

Preston@adventuremanagement.com    

The Risk Management Blog is a place where Risk Managers from around the world present their musings on the state of the industry.

 Rick Curtis