An assessment of risk evaluation

02-20-2005

The weeks of chaos in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami dramatically underscored the importance of travelers to be able to obtain fast, accurate, reliable, real-time information about distant corners of the world.

While this sort of information is crucial whenever emergencies occur, having advance knowledge about more normal conditions and risks travelers might encounter in an unfamiliar place is perhaps even more important. It allows them to avoid dangerous circumstances completely or to take appropriate precautions once they arrive. Forewarned, as the adage goes, is forearmed.

Fortunately, there has never been more information available to travelers about risks they might face. A profusion of guidebooks and Internet sites makes it possible to access a torrent of facts and assessments about situations all around the globe. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for occasional travelers to know where and how to access this information. The information provided by these sources also can be conflicting, misleading, mistaken and out-of-date, and assessments can be influenced by political and commercial agendas.

Last fall, I was one of a half-dozen panelists assessing a semester-long project at Carnegie Mellon University that brought together undergraduate students from the Engineering and Public Policy departments, the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, and the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management. The project assignment was to analyze how and where international travelers get information about risks they might face, to assess the quality and usefulness of that information and to develop consistent guidelines for the presentation of pertinent information and warnings.

This week, I received a copy of the project's final report, a 115-page document titled "Traveling in a Risky World." It makes for interesting reading.

For purposes of the study, travel risks were classified as either ongoing or transient. The first category are relatively stable risks for which reliable statistical information is available, including issues regarding heath conditions, travel safety, crime and communication ability. More difficult to quantify, transient or short-term risks range from elements such as weather or natural disasters to the political or civil climate.

An early step in the project involved surveying 234 travelers, mostly students, to determine where they might turn for information. Most respondents (63 percent) said the Internet was their preferred method, and three out of four favored governmental sources rather than private organizations. Those findings led the group to focus on the variety of Internet sources regarding international travel conditions and risks. They analyzed Web sites operated by governmental agencies, both in the United States and in three other English-speaking countries (Britain, Australia and New Zealand), comparing the information offered on these sites and how it was organized, evaluated and presented.

They also considered non-governmental Web sites, both those that provide information for free, such as sites operated in conjunction with four publishers of travel guides (National Geographic, Frommers, Lonely Planet, and Fodor's) and those who charge for it (the Economist Intelligence Unit, iJet, Kroll and SOS International). They looked at travel-oriented Web sites (Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz) and specialty Web sites that deal with particular areas of concern, from health (the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, MD TravelHealth.com), security (Department of Homeland Security, Central Intelligence Agency), and weather (the National Weather Service, the Weather Channel and BBC Weather).

To standardize criteria, the students considered how the sites dealt with seven categories of travel risk: health, weather/natural disaster, travel safety, crime, targeted attacks, political/civil climate and communication availability. Not surprisingly, the group discovered that the information differed greatly, based largely on what organization was presenting the site.

The governmental sites provided thorough and systematic appraisals of risk information, but their presentations and accessibility varied, especially with the determinations of how severe or localized a particular risk might be.

The free private sites tended to offer more information about what to see and do in a particular place, rather than specific risks. The private Web sites have both the resources and interest in providing ongoing risk assessments, but that information tended to be costly and targeted primarily to business travelers. (iJet does offer intelligence reports for individual travelers, which can be purchased for $15 through Amazon.com).

Strengths and weaknesses of all the sites were assessed, conclusions derived, recommendations offered. The group determined the need for a more standardized system of assessing various risks travelers face and then conveying those warnings to the public. They suggest establishing a three-tiered risk hierarchy to provide general information about a country, as well as offer warnings about elevated and exceptional risks, including a two-stage decision making process for determining the difference between the two levels of risk.

Concluding that there is now no single source where travelers can turn for all the risk information that is pertinent, necessary and available, the group proposes the development of a comprehensive Web site that could gather and collate the most accurate, timely and site specific data available and then present it to travelers in an orderly fashion geared to their particular situation and travel plans.

They even worked out a prototype of how this site might look and function. While the implementation and maintenance of such a sweeping Web site is beyond the abilities of a single semester university project, it would be a worthwhile endeavor, not to mention an enormous benefit to travelers.

Let's hope some other organization takes up the challenge.

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