What’s Wrong with Risk Matrices?¶
Cox, L. A. (2008). What’s Wrong with Risk Matrices?. Risk Analysis, 28(2), 497-512.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Impact Heat Map
- … failure mode is that heat maps compress, and compression misleads: binning hides gradients, and a two-dimensional color cannot faithfully carry severity, probability, and reversibility at once without category errors — cells with very different underlying risk can end up the same shade, lending false confidence.
This sourceShows that qualitative risk matrices compress quantitatively different risks into the same rating, lose resolution, and can mislead decisions.
- … failure mode is that heat maps compress, and compression misleads: binning hides gradients, and a two-dimensional color cannot faithfully carry severity, probability, and reversibility at once without category errors — cells with very different underlying risk can end up the same shade, lending false confidence.
- Response Matrix
- Its failure mode is the well-documented flaw of any such grid: distinct cases get compressed into the same cell, so a matrix can assign identical treatment to situations that differ materially while lending the whole thing a false air of objectivity.
This sourceShows that typical risk matrices can compress quantitatively different risks into the same rating and thereby misdirect treatment decisions.
- Its failure mode is the well-documented flaw of any such grid: distinct cases get compressed into the same cell, so a matrix can assign identical treatment to situations that differ materially while lending the whole thing a false air of objectivity.
- Risk-Band Treatment Matrix
- Worse, poorly constructed matrices can rank pairs of cases worse than chance — a documented hazard of coarse risk grids.
This sourceIt is the standard caution behind keeping bands few, well-placed, and periodically re-examined.
- Worse, poorly constructed matrices can rank pairs of cases worse than chance — a documented hazard of coarse risk grids.
- Risk Register
- And its likelihood/impact scores are easily run backwards — scored to justify a go decision already made rather than to test one; coarse qualitative matrices can even mis-rank risks so that a "medium" hides a genuinely worse case than a "high."
This sourceShows that coarse risk matrices can assign higher ratings to smaller risks and identical ratings to quantitatively different risks.
- And its likelihood/impact scores are easily run backwards — scored to justify a go decision already made rather than to test one; coarse qualitative matrices can even mis-rank risks so that a "medium" hides a genuinely worse case than a "high."
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