Protaris - Personal Safety- Risk Assessing
YOUR OBSERVATIONS – now this really is where we start to work let’s look at the information you have.
We can answer this question just by looking at the situation and breaking the scene into specific areas of risk Protaris call this the Person – Object – Place risk assessment.
If you think about it the Person object place assessment breaks down situations into a format that is tangible and methodical, the model doesn’t always have to run in that format by the way, it can run as Place – person- object.
If you think about it whenever you are going to a location that you have never been to before it will always work that way Place first then Person then Object, if you are permanently based in an office location then it would run as person object place, generally you should know your place ( office ) well enough.
Once you have read the Protaris methods of protection we will give you some case studies to identify how the methods help in all situations including emergency evacuations.
In the following areas we are going to take you on a journey that we feel provides with enough advise to make a significant difference to the way you observe situations, we will discuss and give you advice on your position a critical area, we will tell you why you stand the way you do in crowds why you do not like people being in your personal space
We will also discuss specific areas for you to look at using the Protaris method of assessment, if we go back a few blogs you will see that your personal risk assessments will be used as system that should change the way you operate in this ever changing world we live in.
So let’s get started.
Going back to the picture let’s say that the girl had a knife in her hand. What would be your highest risk, I bet you said the knife, You know we have never seen a knife injure somebody on its own, never seen a pistol fire itself, never seen a rock throw itself, you get what we are saying, really objects don’t hurt people, it’s the persons that offer us most risk, so that’s a good place to start Assessing people.
You observe people every day, what do you remember about the person you met last, did you note what they were wearing, their size any distinguishing marks or age, culture, I bet you didn’t take in much detail.
In this section we are going to be specific on how we assess people in a way that takes your initial high risk assessment category into an area of low risk or in Protaris terms unknown risk areas.
Protaris assess people using the following system:- at this point please remember we are specifically looking at the person themselves not what they are carrying or where they are, those are the Object Place assessments that we will talk about later.
So how do you assess people.
How quickly do you assess people?
If you think about it we all assess people , almost instantly we just know when things are not quite right, you may have heard of the saying never judge a book by its cover, well that’s fine but think about our models of risk High and Unknown risk, we at Protaris work on fact we set systems in place so that our very first observation gives us enough details so that we position ourselves in way that is not only safe for you but also a place where you can reduce risk to you massively. In essence we do judge a book by its cover , because that’s what it is telling us.
Person assessments:-
• Age
• Size
• Attire
• Culture
• Body language
• Gender
• History
There you go that’s the Protaris list does that all make sense to you. Comprehensive, exhausted and unique – “NOT”.
So in order to make it all make sense we have to break it down so that it does become comprehensive, exhaustive and unique.
Person Risk categories broken down:-
Age – Who would you rather deal with somebody our age which is 21 or an older person let’s say for arguments sake the Protaris teams combined age 35 +
Most people say the older person we say the younger person strange I know but here are our reasons and an initial introduction to Neuroscience, for those who don’t know what neuroscience is its apparently it’s stuff to do with your brain.
How many of you are scared of spiders or snakes, lots i bet anything bigger than a communal garden worm and most of the Protaris team will leave smoking boots as they hit the speed of sound running. You know there is a reason whilst these insects and serpents cause us fear it’s down to that instinctive area of the brain, we are now going to swap the word instinct to the word limbic system and inparticular the Amygdala, in basic terms this is an area of the brain that is active as soon as you are born it’s an area of the brain that has kept us as a race of people alive for millions of years, it’s the part of the brain that instantly makes you aware of danger, you guessed it it’s the area of the brain that you all said you felt when things didn’t seem quite right. It's the Limbic area of the brain that gives you that feeling, if we were to go back millions of years we listened to it and used it religiously let’s face it trying to reason with a spear and loin cloth whilst faced with a tyrannosaurus rex was not always advisable.
So what it gave us was a unique defence system that has served us well throughout history. Of course in modern times the likely hood of walking down the road and turning a corner and coming face to face with a marauding dinosaur is highly unlikely so there for we have grown to ignore the limbic response sometimes referred to as the 6th sense. Now that all makes sense.
But it still serves us well, a lot of people have a fear of snakes and spiders, that fear comes from the limbic system even though snakes and spiders are rarely seen we still fear them from the most primitive part of our brain you see these are the things that killed lots of people and still do, we all know that the mighty t-Rex was extinct millions of years before man was walking the earth, so a big risk to us was the spider and the snake that’s why you still fear the little critters for those of you that like spiders and snakes you are obviously from a different planet.
