Harm, Hazard and Risk Part 1

Harm is an adverse outcome or impact, hazard is a potential source of harm, and risk is the likelihood of harm occurring under certain circumstances. Risk is a combination of the chance that a hazard will cause harm and how serious that harm could be. Risk is usually described as being "high", "medium", or "low".

For example, when crossing a road, the cars and other traffic are the main hazards, and the risk is a combination of how likely it is that you'll be hit by a vehicle, along with how seriously you might be injured. 

Ref
ISO 14971, the International Standard for Risk Management

Flying is a routine activity and there are thousands of commercial flights every day. Yet, despite a strong track record of safety, commercial aviation is a hazardous activity. Last year, we were reminded of the risk by two nearly back-to-back fatal crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft that led to a combined 346 fatalities and the worldwide grounding of the entire fleet. In both of these crashes, a sequence of events unfolded due to the interaction between pilot actions and a software control called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The trigger event was faulty sensor data from the Angle of Attack (AOA) sensor which caused the MCAS to activate in an effort to stabilize the plane by lowering the nose. When the pilots tried to counter by trying to manually get the plane to nose-up, the MCAS continued to issue the nose-down commands. This sequence of events is shown in the top right of the graphic above. The hazardous situation in this case, as shown in the bottom right of the graphic above, is the failure to achieve altitude after take off due to these events. The result is a disastrous fatal crash with no survivors.

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