Risk + Safety + Security + Sciences

This discussion explores the meaning and utility of risk appetite in enterprise risk management, noting that although the term is widely used, its definition remains inconsistent across international standards. It examines how risk appetite differs from traditional concepts such as risk acceptability and risk-seeking.

This discussion examines a significant governance and safety gap regarding travel and mobility within Australian universities. We argue that while institutions spend hundreds of millions of dollars on travel, they cannot adequately demonstrate that these expenditures meet their legal duty of care or risk management standards.

This discussion explores the governance vulnerabilities arising from overlapping and uncoordinated regulatory regimes governing critical infrastructure in Victoria. Research highlights how a single entity must navigate four separate assurance frameworks and three different asset registers, none of which are required to be reconciled or integrated.

This discussion examines a critical competency gap in the governance of Australia’s infrastructure entities, where boards are legally required to attest to security risk management despite lacking mandated expertise in the field.

This discussion examines the significant legal and governance hazards caused by definitional drift in the fields of risk, safety, and security. The author argues that professional terms are dangerously unstable, with the word risk alone possessing over a dozen incompatible definitions across various international standards and academic disciplines.

The provided research primer introduces agnotology, the academic study of how ignorance is deliberately or structurally produced rather than a natural lack of data. 

The global travel landscape of mid-2026 represents a permanent structural shift. High costs and thinned capacity are no longer discrete, temporary shocks; they are persistent conditions of the modern world. Tony Ridley

This technical guide from Infrastructure Australia outlines the strategic framework for managing risk and uncertainty within large-scale infrastructure projects. It distinguishes risks as predictable events with estimable outcomes, while defining uncertainties as complex scenarios where probabilities are difficult to quantify. 

This discussion advises corporate leadership to move beyond a simplistic reliance on government travel warnings and single-vendor platforms to fulfil their legal duty of care. Tony Ridley

This executive analysis and report provides a strategic risk forecast for global travel between June and November 2026, primarily focusing on systemic disruptions stemming from a conflict involving Iran. https://www.linkedin.com/company/enterprise-security-risk-management-tony-ridley/