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- Permanent Link:
- http://dpanther.fiu.edu/dpService/dpPurlService/purl/FI13042156/00001
Notes
- Summary:
- This report is a contribution to the International Futures Programme and its dedication to risk management research. It outlines the potential for global-scale disasters resulting from the aggregation of risks across an increasingly interdependent and interconnected world, and presents various strategies to improve international capacity to deal with these growing threats. A global shock is a rapid onset event with significantly disruptive consequences for at least two continents, whereby initial impacts compound and spread beyond the ability of policy interventions to contain their adverse effect. Five drivers are identified as responsible for increasing the potential for global proportion crisis. The first is heightened mobility in terms of people, products, information, etc. While this has meant greater opportunities for economic growth and development, it has also meant increased potential for risks to spread rapidly as the channels to propagate risks around the world have increased exponentially. A second driver is increased interdependency of production and delivery systems. As communications systems become more vital to the functioning of a number of critical services, potential disruptions in these systems can lead to broader systemic paralysis. A third is the centralization of systems for the sake of efficiency and speed. Fourth is the concentration of people and assets in an increasing number of megacities, thus concentrating vulnerabilities. And lastly, there is the pervasiveness of groupthink amongst policymakers and the private sector in terms of uncritically maintaining outdated standard operating procedures and models. Five events have the potential to evolve into global shocks: financial crises, pandemics, cyber risks, social unrest, and geomagnetic storms. One suggested means of managing global risks is to develop surveillance and early warning systems whereby localized or national level disturbances are analyzed to determine their potential as vectors for global scale disruptions. Another involves developing risk maps and threat models to understand the structure and general features of complex systems and how their component parts react to a variety of stressors. These are posited as vital tools in establishing methods to detect potential shocks and corresponding policy interventions. The report emphasizes a focus on understanding underlying drivers and taking a broader and more systemic view of risk. And finally, it calls for developing or reforming complex systems so that they are more robust, contain redundancies, and privilege diversity, while building societal resiliency as sensible ways to deal with not being able to predict how and what will produce global shocks. ( English )
- Subject:
- Disaster Risk Management & Governance ( English )
- Citation/Reference:
- Radisch, J., Oborne, M., Stevens, B., Schieb, P.A., Sawaya, D. (2011). Future global shocks: improving risk governance. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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