Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA)
Program Purpose
The Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process helps communities understand the normal set of risks it faces. By identifying and prioritizing those threats, a community can then make smarter decisions. Leaders need to manage the risks through appropriate planning, mitigation strategies, and developing needed capabilities.
Risk is the potential for an unwanted outcome resulting from an incident, event, or occurrence, as determined by its likelihood and the associated consequences. By considering changes to these elements, a community can understand how to best manage and plan for its greatest risks across the full range of the threats and hazards it faces.
Overview
The THIRA is a three-step risk assessment process that helps communities answer the following questions:
· What threats and hazards can affect our community?
· If they occurred, what impacts would those threats and hazards have on our community?
· Based on those impacts, what capabilities should our community have?
The THIRA helps communities understand their risks and determine the level of capability they need in order to address those risks. The outputs that form this process lay the foundation for determining a community's capability gaps as part of the Stakeholder Preparedness Review.
1. Identify Threats and Hazards of Concern: Based on a combination of experience, forecasting, subject matter expertise, and other available resources, develop a list of threats and hazards that could affect the community. When deciding what threats and hazards to include in the THIRA, communities consider only those that challenge its ability to deliver at least one core capability more than any other threat or hazard; the THIRA is not intended to include less challenging threats and hazards.
2. Give the Threats and Hazards Context: Describe the threats and hazards identified in step 1, showing how they may affect the community and create challenges in performing the core capabilities. Identify the impacts that a threat or hazard may have on a community.
3. Establish Capability Targets: Using the impacts identified in step 2, determine the level of capability that the community plans to achieve over time in order to manage the threats and hazards it faces. Using standardized language, create capability targets for each of the core capabilities based on this desired level of capability by identifying impacts, objectives, and timeframe metrics.