I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation Michael Robertson did for my hang gliding club on Risk Management about 20 years ago. He developed "Robertson's Charts of Reliability" which provide a way to quantify the risks involved in hang gliding and paragliding. Essential, this takes into account several aspects such as the weather, the difficulty of the launch and landing, how you are feeling that day, etc. and gave each of them a numeric score. These were then combined to provide a single score for your risk on that day, allowing you to make your decision to fly based on empirical data rather than just your gut.
A recent article on Risk Management as it applies to Paragliding can be found at
https://www.ushpa.org/page/risk-mana...-for-pg-pilots. I find these concepts apply equally to Motorcycling, SCUBA, sea kayaking, walking the dog, etc.
Quote:
Risk Management
We can't possibly be expected to understand and analyze every risk, so how can we manage risks that we don't even know exist. Fortunately managing unknown risks is no more complicated than accounting for the known risks. An engineer designing a building or airplane part analyzes the known risks, then accounts for possible unknown risks by adding a factor of safety. Depending on the consequences of failure and how well the risks are understood, this factor of safety is typically 2 to 5 times the calculated value. Because of the universal application of this concept in engineering, building collapses and catastrophic mechanical failures in aircraft are exceedingly rare. This same concept can be applied to piloting decisions.
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