A Fuzzy Cognitive Map approach to risk management for the humanitarian sector

Safety and security represent a primary condition for non‐governmental organisations for properly deliver humanitarian aid. The increasing of insecure and volatile environments requests growing attention towards risk management to reduce or make acceptable the risk of operators, organisation, programme, partners and community. Typically, the majority of the risk management techniques involves the risk “assessment”, “analysis” and “mitigation” as main steps. Each phase considers threats in terms of degree of impact and likelihood singularly. They do not cover the possible connections among all threats. Since the risk concept is strictly connected to human expectations and their ability of prediction/intervention in unknown and uncertain situations, this paper aims at proposing a Fuzzy Cognitive Map based approach, able to investigate the main threats for NGOs, all the possible connections between them and the relevance of each connection. Thus, the proposed approach enables to see risks as an integrated system rather than indipendent factors. Moreover, the realised model can be simulated so as to analyse how a possible corrective action could reduce or remove the threats effects on the system.