Risk Management for Higher Education

The tragedies of the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes and the acts of violence that have struck the campuses of Virginia Tech, Delaware State, and Northern Illinois underscored the need to gain a better understanding of the threats, risks and vulnerabilities of institutions of higher education due to natural disasters, large-scale crimes, and other emergencies.  To aid that effort, ASME-ITI and American Insurance Group (AIG) collaborated on the development of a risk assessment process that will ultimately result in information sharing and the spread of best practices among all institutions of higher learning. 

The resulting report, "Risk Management for Higher Education", sets out the RAMCAP Plus^® process as a systematic and consistent approach to provide decision-makers with a rational way of assigning priorities and allocating finite resources in order to protect the multitude of potential targets. 


Standard for Higher Education Campuses

Additionally, ASME-ITI has convened a standards committee to codify this methodology into an American National Standard.  The resulting standard will provide a consistent and technically sound approach to identify, analyze, and communicate risks on college and university campuses.  It will also provide a forum for the exchange of best practices for safety and security among participating institutions. 

ASME-ITI is fully accredited as a standards developer by ANSI.

Higher Education Standard Committee Meeting

The Higher Education Risk Standard is currently under public review.  If you would like to participate in the review, please see the Draft Standard (PDF) and Public Comment Form (Excel spreadsheet) in the "Resources" section below.  The public review will end on March 29, 2010 at 5:00pm (EDT).  Please provide your public comments to James Creel (creelj@asme.org) within the proper time frame.  Thank you.