Surf beach drowning is an example of a tourist injury problem in Australia. In this paper, a process is outlined to identify and tease out the roles and relationships among causal risk factors, markers of risk, and components of risk exposure for surf beach drowning. This process can assist the identification and analysis of risk to inform more detailed studies or suggest potential interventions; the ultimate goal being to improve safety in this outdoor adventure tourist activity. The steps in the process require the identification of candidate factors associated with the injury problem, then categorising these factors based on Haddon’s matrix. The final step is to determine risk causation and assess the modifiability of identified risk factors.