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 Ensure better use of limited resources (such as training areas and ranges).
Ensure the health and the welfare of the soldiers and other affected personnel.
Minimize or eliminate the damage to natural and cultural resources.
1-27. Risk Management Principles. Commanders use the following three risk management principles
(described in FMs 100-14 and 3-100.4) to guide environmental-risk decision making:
Integrate risk management into mission planning, preparation, and execution.
Make the risk decisions at the appropriate level in the chain of command.
Accept no unnecessary risk.
1-28. Five-Step Process. Knowledge of environmental factors is key to planning and decision making.
With this knowledge, leaders quantify risks, detect problem areas, reduce the risk of injury or death,
reduce property damage, and ensure compliance with the environmental laws and regulations. The five
steps identify specific environmental considerations that the commander and his staff must consider.
Step 1. Identify the environmental hazards. Commanders and staffs identify environmental
hazards during mission analysis. FMs 100-14 and 3-100. 4 define hazards as any actual or
potential condition that can cause injury, illness, or death to personnel; damage to or loss of
equipment or property; or mission degradation. Environmental hazards include all the activities
that may pollute, create negative noise-related effects, degrade archaeological/cultural resources,
or negatively affect threatened or endangered species' habitats.
Step 2. Assess environmental hazards to determine risk. Risk assessment is a three-stage process
to determine the risk of potential harm to the environment. The three stages are assess the
probability of each hazard, assess the severity of each hazard, and determine the risk level of each
hazard.
Assessments include two factors--probability and severity. Probability is how often an
environmental hazard is likely to occur. Severity is the effect a hazard will have
expressed in terms of the degree of injury or illness, loss of or damage to the equipment
or property, the environmental damage, and other mission-impairing factors (such as the
loss of combat power).
Probability and severity are estimates that require individual judgment and a working
knowledge of the risk management process and its terminology. Leaders must assess the
probability and the potential severity of environmental damage. Platoon leaders use
common sense, past evaluations, higher commander guidance, historical data, lessons
learned, and any other useful sources to determine the probability of an event occurring.
Severity, however, attempts to quantify the amount of potential damage created by an
event. While leaders must assess the probability of environmental damage, they must also
determine how much damage the event would cause, regardless of the probability.
It is usually easier to determine the probability than the severity. Definitions for the
degrees of severity are not absolute; they are conditional and related to the mission,
enemy, terrain, troops, time available, and civilian consideration (METT-TC). Leaders
1-10
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