A new book examines how to deal with the complex problems caused by natural and humanitarian disasters, technological failures and geopolitical tensions.

Rarely a day passes without headlines describing national, regional or global crises. The world is disrupted by war, climatic extremes, geopolitical tensions, the risks of untamed technology, disease outbreaks, populist policy upheavals, tariffs, trade chokepoints and more. Attention and political debates shift from one to another, up and down the lists of what are variously termed polycrises and global catastrophic risks. Leaders and media pay attention to crises one at a time, from time to time.

Right now, societies and governments across the world are re-learning that conflicts and disruptions arise from ignored or badly managed preconditions, erupt with variable speed, change shape, bleed across boundaries, merge and coalesce with other risks, and produce long-term and often unexpected impacts. We should not be surprised.

In a new book, Re-imagining Risk and Disruption, colleagues and I explore the commonalities displayed by the risks and disruptions listed above and others. The aim is better understanding of their shared problem attributes that can inform more consistent and efficacious responses. Our starting point is to gather significant risks and disruptions, whether natural, human or mixed in origin and impact, into the single, broad category of ‘complex unbounded problems’ (CUPs). This is closer to the interactive ‘polycrisis’ construct than other categorisations.

Drawing on terminology from the disaster field, CUPs contrast with lesser but not insignificant ‘routine’........

© Pearls and Irritations