Good communication and consultation is usually crucial for effective risk management. As shown in Figure 1.3.1, ISO 31000:2018 indicates that stakeholders may have an important role in all stages of the risk management process. Understanding the needs, interests, and influence of stakeholders, including their risk perceptions, and their legal and social context, can greatly affect the effectiveness of the definition of the context, the risk assessment, and risk treatment. Stakeholder communication and consultation is often also critical in sourcing funding for risk control options. It is rather common that certain risk analysis techniques produce information and lead to risk assessment findings where other actors have the authority to implement changes in the system. This is especially the case in large-scale, distributed systems where legal and operational responsibilities are divided between private actors and public authorities. In such cases, communicating the findings to relevant actors should be appropriately considered. Risk matrices and probability-consequence diagrams are often applied in risk communication activities, for decision makers and stakeholders to obtain a common understanding of the relevant risks. Depending on the application, also maps displaying the risk levels over spatial areas, or diagrams showing the evolution over time, are used.

Monitoring and review in the risk management process is another important parallel activity, which cuts across the various risk management stages. Focusing on the implementation of an ongoing risk management process, quality management activities ensure that the information processed in the five stages is adequately utilized to establish the context, perform the risk assessment, and implement appropriate risk control options. Such monitoring and review is critical to ensure high-quality, timeliness, and useful risk assessment for making good risk management decisions. This monitoring also concerns the consultations and communication with the stakeholders. Another aspect of the monitoring and review activity addresses the fact that systems, as well as the nature of the activities and processes within the system, and their environment, change over time. It is, therefore, vital that risk management is up-to-date, which requires a periodic re-evaluation of the adequacy of the applied tools and information sources. This aspect aligns with the continuous improvement of the overall risk management framework, see Section 1.2.