Outdoor Risk and Safety Briefing Book

Overview

Outdoor engagement is a core public health, climate, and economic intervention. Yet the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters are drastically expanding the scope and severity of outdoor risk and liability. Simultaneously, well-managed encounters with outdoor risk can offer significant health, community, and economic benefits that outweigh the downside of the risk. Avoiding all potential risks can leave people, especially children, less risk-aware, less capable of handling risk when it arises, and more exposed to risks in the long term. States are leading the way in responding to, adapting to, and challenging risk across liability, insurance, ‘risky play,’ psychological safety, wildfires, climate, and equal opportunity. Just as interconnected risks compound on one another, risk and liability management strategies can combine to produce outcomes greater than the sum of their parts. This Briefing Book is written broadly for policymakers and their communities, as well as outdoor education programs (like camps and schools), to foster new ways of solving old problems. It offers strategies to best assess emerging challenges and reframing risk using current thinking informed by the evolution of risk management in outdoor spaces.