An application of qualitative risk analysis as a tool adopted by public organizations for evaluating “green projects”

This paper intends to explore the application of Qualitative Risk Analysis in evaluating the risk level associated with several public projects based on urban and peri-urban agriculture as a model of sustainable development of a territory. Therefore, urban agriculture is seen as an experimental model through which we can analyze the interaction between local institutions and citizens, as well as being a marketing tool to promote sustainability aspects linked to the territory. To this end, after a bibliographic review on the Qualitative Risk Analysis and the involvement of stakeholders in decisions relating to the public sector, a valuation of certain projects on the theme of urban and peri-urban agriculture, advanced by the local public Administration will be shown. The analysis proceeds with the classification of projects according to defined risk categories and their graphical representation through probability-impact matrix. The matrix shows that the data scores and the ranking vary significantly for each of the different projects involved. In this respect, the main purpose of this paper is to reveal how the success of a marketing policy based on the concept of sustainable marketing for promoting the territory depends, in many cases, not only on the characteristics of the territory analyzed, but also on the level of “riskiness” associated with the projects. Consequently, the empirical results of the paper can be a guide for public organizations, dealing with a plurality of projects but with limited resources, to assess and to prioritize projects using the level of “riskiness” as a criterion. Furthermore, economic resources could be directed to manage projects after taking into account the relevant risk ranking.