Information and Knowledge Management using ArcGIS ModelBuilder

Walter Castelnovo
the potential risks that SCIA could entail. By using standard tools for risks analysis and evaluation (for
instance those described in (IMA 2007), through this step each partner is thus able to associate to the
SCIA under processing a level of risk, with respect to the matters on which he has competence.
Besides evaluating the potential risks involved, during this phase each partner can also plan the
execution of their control activities on that SCIA. The timing of these activities depends both on the
level of risk detected and on the other activities in which that agency is possibly already occupied.
The team review allows the partners to jointly evaluate the SCIA on the basis of the potential risks
each one of them identified individually, thus arriving at a shared risk evaluation. Such an evaluation
forms the basis for determining the more adequate risk treatment strategy to assume among
accepting, rejecting or handling the risks.
Figure 2: Integration of TRM within the SUAP’s workflow
In the case we are considering, accepting the risk means that the team evaluation is such that the
level of risk of the SCIA is not ranked high; thus, also considering the other constraints that could
possibly limit the partners’ activities, there is no particular problem in delaying, and even possibly
avoiding, the ex-post controls. Rejecting the risk amounts to recognizing that the SCIA does not
involve any particular risk and could thus be treated in terms of a silent-assent procedure. Finally,
handling the risk means adopting mitigation plans with the aim of reducing the risks involved in the
SCIA by implementing appropriate risk mitigation actions. Such actions will amount to the competent
authorities planning and performing all the required ex-post controls with a timing that will allow the
processing of the SCIA to be completed within the terms provided by law (60 days).
Once defined and agreed on by all the participants to the team review, each partner has to implement
its own risk handling actions, according to the timing defined by the team review. As observed above,
the execution of the risk handling options can introduce secondary risks that need to be managed.
These risks can be determined by the occurrence of unforeseen situations that could affect the
partners’ capacity to execute the risk handling actions within the terms agreed on. Such risks should
be promptly identified and treated since a delay in one partner’s activity could affect the final result of
the processing of a SCIA. Moreover, because of the potential consequences they could have on the
other partners’ activities, the emergence of these risks should be promptly communicated to the
partners, in order to let them assume all the measures apt to cope with the new situation.
In the TRM model this can be done by a repeated execution of the team review process. However,
due to the strict temporal constraints the processing of a SCIA must satisfy, in the situation we are
considering the team review process cannot be implemented simply as a periodic meeting among the
partners, as it is considered in (Higuera et al. 1994). Since in this case the reiteration cycles of both
the team review process and the continuous processes must be much shorter than those described in
the original model, all these processes should rather be implemented as continuous communication
processes through which people belonging to the same organization, as well as people from different
organizations, interact continuously on a daily basis.
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