Now that you have identified current and future climate hazards and how they can cause or increase harm from your activities, it’s time to assess.
This step is about assessing the physical climate risk of harm. First, you need to consider how severe that harm could be and how likely it is to happen.
Assessing likelihood and consequence
Assess how the climate hazard may change the likelihood and consequences of harm. You should assess this under each emission scenario and time horizon. See Appendix B which is a template showing how to assess your pollution or waste under future emission scenarios and time horizons.
Identify any risk management strategies you already have in place to minimise risks of harm related to climate hazards. This includes any emergency events. Then re-evaluate any residual risk. Residual risk is the level of risk or threat remaining after all applicable control measures have been implemented. This helps determine the efficiency of existing controls and if new or improved controls are needed.
When determining residual risk, ask yourself questions:
- has extreme weather caused specific equipment or processes to create more pollution or waste?
- have heatwaves or extreme heat days caused self-combustion of your stored waste? If so, what were the consequences of the fire? What existing controls do you have in place? Is there still any risk left that needs more controls?
Even if your system has not been impacted by climate hazards in the past, it may be in the future. More frequent, severe and longer-lasting climate hazards can increase the likelihood of harm to nearby receptors. Such as:
- increased bushfire weather and fire activity could increase fire risk at your site. This could increase the risk of harm to nearby communities. Especially for those that are more sensitive to smoke.
- heavier or more frequent extreme rainfall can increase the risk of uncontrolled site surface water and flash flooding. This could lead to increased harm to aquatic ecosystems in nearby surface waters.
Not all climate hazards are modelled in the regional projections. VCSR24 does not include storms, cascading or compounding impacts. These unmodelled climate hazards should also be considered. Refer to Factsheets under Download reports, regional summaries and supporting documents. They may have a low likelihood of occurring but can have high impact. Ask yourself questions:
- how effective will your controls be if climate hazards occurred close together (compound events)? Using the examples above, you may have waste from fires following a recent fire at your site. An extreme rainfall event may occur soon after the fire. If the waste from fires has not been properly disposed of it may be washed into the stormwater system and into nearby surface waters.
- how might failures in other systems impact your business (cascading impacts)? For example, floods and bushfires may cause transport disruptions to your site. This may cause you to have more stored waste on your site than usual. This could lead to increased risk of fire, odour and leachate leading to offsite harm.
- how might storms (including more extreme storms) damage and impact vulnerable infrastructure?
Consider also the vulnerability of the receiving environment. Ecosystems or communities that receive or are exposed to emissions or waste may be more vulnerable to climate change. River flows and volumes are likely to decrease due to climate change which can reduce dilution. This can lead to increased risk of harm to human health and the environment when discharges enter surface waters.
Controlling pollution and waste might be more difficult during severe weather. Some examples of this are:
- a fire might be more intense and harder to control during a heatwave or extreme heat
- a stormwater system may be harder to manage and not operate as effectively during intense storm events.
Our risk management process can help you assess the likelihood and consequences of your risks.
You can use your existing corporate risk criteria to evaluate risks from a changing climate.
Calculating the risk rating
Calculate an overall risk rating after assessing the likelihood and consequences of your risks. Do this for current (present-day) conditions and for each climate scenario.
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