Risk Factor Initiative announced
One of the most basic tenets of safety is preventing incidents before they happen, rather than mitigating the damage after the fact. This involves being able to identify risks and addressing them through corrective actions. And yet, risk surrounds us everywhere we look – everything from natural disasters to heightened cholesterol can factor into a reduced lifespan.
To this end, it’s vital to be able to have an understanding of the role risk plays in our lives. The Canada Safety Council is proud to lend its support to Kensington Communications, Telus Fund and TVO in announcing the Risk Factor Initiative, a national awareness campaign launching July 10 with an aim toward improving the ability of Canadians to better identify and assess risky behaviours.
The campaign’s launch will be marked by a live event in Canmore, Alta., featuring the first public screening of a documentary exposing the omnipresence of risk in our day-to-day lives. The film, created by documentary filmmaker Robert Lang, explores and demystifies personal and societal risks through discussion with some of the world’s top risk experts including an extreme ice climber, a physicist in a nuclear reactor and a security guru at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
The documentary’s premiere will take place July 10 at artsPlace in Canmore, Alta., from 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m. MT, with a Q&A featuring the filmmaker, National Geographic’s 2014-15 Adventurer of the Year Will Gadd and Parks Canada Visitor Safety Specialist Grant Statham following the screening. Additional screenings are being planned, including a July 25 event at Innis College in Toronto.
For those unable to attend a screening, the documentary will air in English on TVO in Ontario and in French on Canal D starting in August. It will be available online at tvo.org after airing. The documentary will also air in British Columbia on the Knowledge Network in October.
In conjunction with the documentary, a free app will be launched through iTunes and GooglePlay July 10. Risk Navigator is a personal risk assistant, measuring the risk and benefits of hundreds of activities in relation to the time the activity removes from the average lifespan. The app, based on research by top safety experts, was developed in coordination with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University and with Sir David Spiegelhalter, Director of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge.
Interested parties can find more information at riskfactor.ca and may view the official Risk Factor release at the following link: https://riskfactor.ca/news/pressrelease