Andy Marshall, a member of CRJ’s Editorial Advisory Panel, started an interesting discussion on our LinkedIn Group last week. He asked whether anyone had ever had to prove ‘value for money’ for a publicly funded emergency planning unit and, if so, how people went about it.

Debate moved on to demonstrating how planning leads to lives being saved or injuries being prevented, and how to identify the economic cost of a fatality or injury and apply it as a benefit of the process.

Work on the Crisis Response Journal website is ongoing – in a few weeks all of the content we have published since we launched will be available to members, and I’m sure this will be a vital resource, especially as background for current debates and for research.

In the meantime, and in the light of the discussions on the LinkedIn Group, I’m posting a comment piece by Richard Fitzhugh of Needhams 1834. Using financial instruments to define risk registers was published in CRJ 6:1.

In the article, Richard suggests an empirical method for assigning comparative values to loss to a range of incidents as indicated in a risk register, through the application of quasi-financial risk instruments.

As he says: “Try plugging figures into this method from the data you have available – I can assure you that your risk register will change complexion and become much easier to justify to critics when an incident happens.”

Debate will surely continue about subjectivity, politics, public opinion and whether decisions, planning and prioritisation should be made purely on a cost basis – especially when set against today’s background of financial restraint.

Please see the attached file for more information.