Threat-Target Ratings

Miradi includes a tool for rating the impact of individual Threats on Conservation Targets. Miradi also rolls up those individual Threat-Target ratings to provide calculated summary ratings for each Threat and Target across the entire project.

This article describes how the threat rating tool in Miradi works:

• Rate the impact of Threats on your Targets
• How individual threat ratings are calculated
• How summary threat ratings are calculated

Watch a demonstration of how to use the Threat Rating tool in Miradi Share.

Learn more about how to Identify and Prioritize Direct Threats with teams.

Find articles related to a variety of threat rating methods in the Conservation Standards Resource Library. 

Rate the impact of Threats on your Targets

The Miradi Threat Rating tool is found in Miradi Share under SITUATION ASSESSMENT > Threat Analysis.

In order to rate the impact of a Threat on a Target, the Threats and Targets must first be created and linked in a Situation Model diagram. Threats can be linked to Targets directly, or they can be linked indirectly through Biophysical Factors. Learn more about how to add content to your Situation Model diagram.

Once you have added Threats and Targets to your Situation Model and created links between them, they will show up in your Threat Analysis table as "Not Specified". Targets are listed across the top of the table, and Threats are listed down the left side. The cells in the table provide information about the Threat-Target rating:

• Colored cells represent the calculated rating for the specific Threat-Target relationship. Learn about how individual Threat-Target ratings are calculated.
• Blank cells mean that the Threat and Target are not linked in the Situation Model. If you would like to create a rating for one of the blank cells, go back to the Situation Model and add a link to connect the Threat to the Target.
• 'Not Specified' means that the Threat and Target are linked in the Situation Model but the rating has not been completed yet.
• Summary ratings for the Threats are included in the final column at the right, and summary ratings for the Targets are included along the bottom of the table. Learn how summary ratings are calculated.

Complete a Threat-Target rating

Click on any colored cell or a cell that is 'Not Specified' to open the threat rating dialog box for a specific Threat-Target relationship.

Rate the Threat based on three criteria: Scope, Severity and Irreversibility. Learn more about each criterion by clicking on the "?" next to the criterion name.

The overall Threat-Target rating is calculated once you close out of the threat rating dialog box. Learn how individual threat ratings are calculated.

NOTE: Use the N/A checkbox for any Threat-Target relationships that are no longer relevant or should not be included in your overall threat analysis. Any existing rating data will be stored in your project and can be recovered by deselecting the N/A box at a later date.

How individual threat ratings are calculated

Miradi calculates the individual threat-target ratings based on the three criteria described above: Scope, Severity, and Irreversibility. First, Miradi combines the Scope and Severity ratings to get the overall threat magnitude rating for each threat on each target, using the following rule-based system: 

Threat magnitude is then combined with Irreversibility ratings using the second table to get the final  Threat-Target Rating using the following rule-based system: 

The final Threat-Target rating values are displayed in the Threat Analysis table in Miradi:

The final Threat-Target ratings are used to calculate the project-wide summary ratings as described in the next section, How summary ratings are calculated.

How summary ratings are calculated

Miradi uses a rule-based procedure for aggregating threat ratings across multiple targets or across multiple threats. Miradi’s rules for rolling up threat ratings were developed by the The Nature Conservancy's (TNC) 5-S Framework and have been applied in threat ratings carried out by hundreds of TNC teams across the globe. 

Miradi creates a matrix of Threats and Targets. In the example below, the far right-hand column contains the ratings for each threat across all targets (a Type II roll-up). The bottom row contains the overall threat rating for each target (a Type III roll-up).

To calculate Type II and Type III roll-ups, Miradi uses two rules: 

3-5-7 Rule

Multiple threats to individual targets and multiple target threat scores are first summed together using the 3-5-7 rule:

• 3 High rated threats are equivalent to 1 Very High-rated threat;
• 5 Medium rated threats are equivalent to 1 High-rated threat;
• 7 Low rated threats are equivalent to 1 Medium-rated threat

In the example above, the second row shows the Housing threat. There are 3 High ratings (which equals 1 Very High) and 1 Very High rating, so it is treated as if it had two Very High ratings. In the Ione Chapparal Column, there are 4 Medium ratings (which equals one High), plus one High, for a total equivalent of 2 High ratings.

2-Prime Rule

After the 3-5-7 rule has been applied, the 2-prime rule is used to determine the rolled up rating for a target, a threat, or for the whole project. This rule requires the equivalent of two ratings at a certain level for the end result to be that level. For example, there would have to be the equivalent of at least two Very High ratings to produce a Very High result, or two ratings of Medium or above to produce a Medium result.

In the example, the Housing threat row has the equivalent of two Very High ratings (due to the 3-5-7 rule), so the result is Very High. The Recreational Vehicles row has one Medium rating and one Low. Since it does not have two or more Mediums, the result is Low.

Majority Override

The Majority Override rule ensures that the overall project rating is not reduced too much by the other rules. Normally, the overall project rating is a rollup of the threat ratings, using the rules above. However, if a majority of the targets have a rating higher than that computed rollup, then that majority rating is used instead.

For example, if the result of using the 3-5-7 and 2-prime rules gave a project rating of Medium, but 4 out of the 6 targets had at least one rating of at High (or Very High), then the Majority Override rule would take effect and the overall project rating would be High.   

Overall threat rating for the project

Finally, the cell in the lower right-hand corner contains the overall ranking for the project (a Type IV roll-up), which is calculated by rolling up the far-right hand column using the 2-prime rule.