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Mitigation hierarchy

By Updated

The order in which risk treatments are tried: eliminate, substitute, engineer, administrative, then accept and monitor. Borrowed from the occupational-safety hierarchy of controls 1 and mirrored in AI Act Article 9(5) 2; higher rungs first, with the reason recorded when they are infeasible.

Developed in
ch. 13, Treating risk: the mitigation hierarchy
Chapters
ch. 13, Risk Management
Source
2 numbered references, listed below

Where it is used

The term is not used under this name in running prose; the sections listed under "Developed in" treat it.

  • AI Act (EU)

    Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the EU's horizontal, risk-tiered law for AI, amended by the Digital Omnibus.

Sources

  1. [1] Hierarchy of Controls (elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls, PPE). CDC / NIOSH. 2024-04-10. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/hierarchy-of-controls/about/index.html (verified: primary)
  2. [2] Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (AI Act), consolidated text as amended by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 (Digital Omnibus on AI, in force 27 Jul 2026; definitions in Art. 3, incl. 3(1), 3(3) to 3(14), 3(14b), 3(20), 3(22), 3(23), 3(29) to 3(32), 3(49), 3(55) to 3(57), 3(60), 3(61), 3(63), 3(68); Arts. 4, 5, 6 (incl. 6(3) third subparagraph, profiling), 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22 to 27 (incl. 26(11)), 40, 41, 43, 47, 48, 50, 53 (incl. 53(1)(c)), 55, 57, 60, 72, 73, 86; Annexes I, III, IV). Publications Office of the EU (EUR-Lex). 2026-07-27. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/2026-07-27/eng (verified: primary)

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). Mitigation hierarchy. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/mitigation-hierarchy. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026mitigationhierarchy,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{Mitigation hierarchy}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/mitigation-hierarchy}
}