Disaster Mitigation Under Complex Contingencies: Risk Management Outline for a Connected World

Disasters have always been part of human history. Although global safety has increased over the years, it is a question if the positive trend will continue. The most discussed major uncertainty is climate change, temporarily dwarfed by the COVID-19 virus pandemic. There are however many other challenges due to an increasingly connected and complex world. Failure to recognize an approaching danger is as human as the exaggeration by those who get worried too easily. If risk management systems shall handle the new risks, substantial advances in how to identify new risks are needed as well as improvements in the identification of cost-efficient mitigations. The collateral damage caused by mitigative measures can be high. Invasive actions, possibly amplified by social and traditional media, may disrupt supply chains and factories, and whole economies might suffer. A risk management system that can identify types of global risks and evaluate measures on cost-efficiency is needed to see if the cure could become worse than the disease.