Effective aquatic risk management: seven steps to lowering your liability

Parks & Recreation, Feb, 2003 by John Fletemeyer, Karen Temme

Aquatic liability is approaching a paradigm shift, making it necessary for aquatic professionals employed at all levels to have knowledge about the principles of risk management.

This need is for several reasons. First, there's an increasing threat of negligence litigation and a trend for courts to impose verdicts favoring the plaintiff. Second, because of the need to better educate the public about aquatic safety, there's a higher level of awareness by the public about the dangers associated with aquatic environments, and a corresponding demand for better public safety services. In addition, stronger emphasis is being placed on preventive practices rather than on reactionary measures, owing in part to statistical data indicating the efficacy of prevention.

When compared to the more generalized form of risk management, aquatic risk management has some distinguishing characteristics. For starters, most aquatic environments and hazards are highly dynamic, changing day to day and even minute to minute. Consequently, aquatic risk management must be regarded as an ongoing process, requiring a considerable time commitment by staff and a focus on a regimen involving continuous monitoring and evaluation.

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In addition, many hazards associated with aquatic environments aren't easily recognizable, even by experts, and warnings about a specific hazard aren't as effective as they are often intended for some not-so-obvious reasons. For example, a significant percentage of the population is functionally illiterate, and because of a phenomenon sometimes called "sign pollution"--that is, a glut of signs leading to none of them being read--these factors conspire to render aquatic warnings signs less effective than warnings posted in non-aquatic environments. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that a significant percentage of the population is visually impaired. When attending a pool or beach, they typically leave their corrective eye wear at home, in their hotel rooms or in their cars.

With this caveats in mind, we have identified seven steps that every aquatic risk management and safety professional should consider.

Step 1: Identifying Gods and Objectives

The ultimate goal of risk management is to identify ways of eliminating injuries to individuals (employees and guests) and to reduce property loss. This is the same goal for aquatic risk management, but in regards to aquatics, the greater emphasis is placed on eliminating injury. This is accomplished by systematically identifying and removing hazards. In cases when, for logistical or financial reasons it's not possible to remove the hazard, provide an effective warning that's based on an established standard.

Step 2: Organizing an Assessment Team

An assessment team is vital to the success of any risk-management program, because the team's expertise is responsible for identifying and inventorying the risks in a particular aquatic setting. In a small pool, an assessment team may consist of only two or three individuals with experience in swimming pool management, water chemistry and lifeguard training. Usually one member of the team will have a certification as a pool/spa operator.

In larger aquatic environments such as oceans or lakes, this task of identifying and measuring risks becomes exceedingly more complicated, and often requires the experience of a team of experts from a number of unrelated fields. In the course of giving workshops, we developed an organizational chart that lists some of the experts who might be consulted to develop a comprehensive risk assessment for an ocean beach.

Although this may seem like overkill, the consequences of overlooking a hazard that might cause injury to a patron justifies the time and money involved in assimilating a group of experts such as the one that appears in the chart on p. 43.

Step 3: Identifying and Measuring Risks

After the hazards associated with a particular environment are identified, it then becomes necessary to measure their relative danger to an individual's safety. This is a challenging task, because there's often little objective information to measure one risk against another.

Typically, the yardstick used to measure risks is accident statistical data. For example, statistical research has determined that 88 percent of all drownings along ocean beaches are caused by rip currents, with shark attacks and lightning strikes a distant second and third. With statistical data this compelling, it becomes obvious that most of an agency's time and money should be targeted at responding to this risk. Generally speaking, the greater the risk, the greater the time and money should be devoted to eliminating it.

Step 4: Providing Effective Warnings

When hazards and risks can't be eliminated, warnings must be provided. Warning signs have two functions--they warn individuals about dangers they're unaware of, and they serve as reminders about already-known dangers. Although there are many ways to warn about hazards, the most common is to use signage. Thanks to recent research, we know that simply putting up signs isn't enough. Some signage considerations include: