At the initial stage, active consultation with all parties takes place, including within the National Adverse Events Committee, and information is gathered and assessed. An important point in the process is to determine the scale of the adverse event, i.e. to categorise it as a small, medium or large event. The criteria applied are as follows: (i) availability of risk management options; (ii) likelihood of the event occurring again; (iii) geographic scale of the physical damage; (iv) geographic scale of the economic impact; and (iv) geographic scale of the social impact (Table 12).