Very often, the best sources of information for assessing risks and their consequences are the members of the project team. However, for particularly large or risky elements, additional information will almost certainly be required. As a general rule, all available data sources should be used when assessing high-priority elements and risks, and evaluating ways of managing them. Information sources may include: - ==historical records==, often for similar or related projects; - ==project experience==, either specific to the kind of project being assessed or more general experience with large or complex activities or with similar kinds of contractors or suppliers; - ==industry best practice and user experience==, including relevant benchmarks and standards; relevant published literature and research reports, including appropriate theory, for example relating to failure modes or equipment reliability; - product brochures, technical manuals and audit reports; - test marketing and market research, where there is benefit in seeking or creating new information relating to specific aspects of the project, and particularly its acceptability to its intended end-users or customers; - experiments and prototypes, where there may be technical risks or areas in which more empirical rather than theoretical information may be useful; - economic or other models, to provide the necessary theoretical foundations for specific and general risk assessments, including traditional cash-flow and sensitivity models where appropriate; - ==expert commercial and technical judgement==, including that of the project team and appropriate external advisers where necessary. Expert judgement cannot be avoided in project risk management. Relevant historical and other information must be used where appropriate, ==but this project has not taken place yet, and so the information must be interpreted in the context of the specific application being considered==. There is no guarantee that the future will be the same as the past!” — Project Risk Management Guidelines: Managing Risk in Large Projects and Complex Procurements by Dale F. Cooper, Stephen Grey, et al. https://a.co/64rP5X4