Risk evaluations and criteria for firing affecting civil ground

The purpose of this report is to investigate which criteria should apply in the case where the weapon danger area during a firing exercise is partially situated outside the borders of the firing range. International publications have been consulted in order to give an indication of the level of acceptable risk for people without any connection to the firing campaign. These data are quite consistent and independent of the type of danger. The acceptable level is also significantly lower than the ambient threat that most people are exposed to in their daily life. It is also accepted that people connected to the actual process of firing have to tolerate a higher level of threat.

The report establishes a process that quantifies the risk level of a planned exercise that may impact areas outside the firing range. In many cases this process is quite complicated, but it is possible to implement that method in the existing software for calculating the weapon danger area. Certain aspects of risk, e.g. the risk of generating dangerous remaining duds outside the firing range, are hard to quantify. Such dangers have to be avoided to the extent possible.