Risk Heatmap

Scope

Heatmaps only help when they drive prioritization instead of becoming a decorative board artifact. This guide keeps the public-safe operating interpretation and excludes private rendering or export detail.

Audience: System operators, IT administrators, L1/L2 support staff Last Updated: 2026-07-09

Overview

The Risk Heat Map visualizes a program’s risks on a 5x5 grid with likelihood on the Y-axis and impact on the X-axis. Each cell is color-coded by risk level (low, medium, high, critical) and shows the count of risks in that position. A sidebar lists the top 10 highest-scoring risks. You can toggle between inherent and residual risk views.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Meridian.view permission.
• At least one risk in the program’s risk register.

Using the Heat Map

Viewing the Heat Map

Steps:

1. Navigate to a program’s Risk Register page.
2. Click the Heat Map link (or navigate directly to the relevant workflow).

Result: A 5x5 grid appears with risks placed by their likelihood (rows) and impact (columns). Each cell shows:

• The risk count in that cell.
• Color coding: green (low), yellow (medium), red (high), dark red (critical).
• Click a cell to see the list of risks at that position.

Toggling Inherent vs. Residual View

Steps:

1. Use the Inherent / Residual toggle at the top of the page.

Result:

• Inherent: Shows risks positioned by their raw likelihood and impact scores.
• Residual: Shows risks that have an effective residual score. Manual-mode risks are positioned by residual likelihood and residual impact. Computed-mode risks still contribute to the residual top-risk ranking, but they are reported separately as unpositioned because computed residual is a scalar score and does not provide grid coordinates.

Drilling Into a Cell

Steps:

1. Click any cell in the grid.

Result: A panel shows the risks in that cell with their ID, reference, title, and score. Each risk links to the risk detail page.

Top Risks Sidebar

The sidebar lists the top 10 risks by score (descending). In inherent view, this uses inherent scores. In residual view, this uses the effective residual score:

• Manual mode: residual_score
• Computed mode: computed_residual_score

If a computed-mode residual risk has a score but no manual residual likelihood/impact, it still appears in the top-risk ranking and in the page warning/list, but not in a heat-map cell.

Understanding the Grid

The grid is 5x5:

• Y-axis (rows): Likelihood, from 1 (bottom) to 5 (top).
• X-axis (columns): Impact, from 1 (left) to 5 (right).
• Score: Likelihood x Impact. Ranges from 1 to 25.
• Risk Level: Derived from the score. Color-coded on the grid.

Score Range	Level	Color
Low	low	Green
Medium	medium	Yellow
High	high	Red
Critical	critical	Dark red

Permissions Reference

Permission	Grants
Meridian.view	View the heat map for any accessible program

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