This paper proposed a state space division method to assess the online short-term risk of power system fast and accurately. This method divided all the possible operation system states into two mutually complementary subspaces according to the occurrence probability. In order to shorten the time-consuming, different method was used to calculate the risk of each subspace. Analytical method (AM) was used to calculate the risk of the first subspace comprised with the large occurrence probability states, which was identified using the Fast Sorting Technique (FST). System states that have a small occurrence probability comprised the second subspace, whose risk was calculated using Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) combined with the adaptive importance sampling technique (AIST) and scattered sampling technique (SST). Through the case studies conducted on the MRTS, it is validated that the proposed method can assess the online short-term risk fast and accurately.