As stated in Section 13.1 of API 580:

“Inspection is often an effective method of risk management. However, inspection may not always provide sufficient risk mitigation or may not be the most cost-effective method.”

This clarifies that inspection is categorized under risk mitigation activities. Similarly, decommissioning is used as a risk mitigation strategy when the risk from continued operation becomes unacceptable.

Risk mitigation activities described in API 580 may:

reduce the magnitude of consequence,

reduce the probability of failure,

enhance survivability, or

mitigate the source of the consequence.

Thus, both inspection and decommissioning clearly fall under the broad category of risk mitigation.