An Evaluation of the State of the Art

Evaluating the state of the art of risk assessment is difficult. Similar to a craftsman with many specialized tools, the risk assessor has a huge variety of risk assessment methods from which to choose. If the available risk assessment methods are inadequate, the quality of risk assessments based on those methods will be limited. The use of high-quality, capable methods, however, does not necessarily ensure high-quality risk assessments. Similar to the craftsman, the risk assessor must first choose from among the available tools the one that is best for the necessary task. Furthermore, the quality of the end result depends not only on the choice of the appropriate tool, but also on the skill with which it is applied.