Emerging Systemic Risks in the 21st Century: An Agenda for Action
Emerging risks: significant drivers in the 21st century
This report is concerned with those risks that affect the systems on which society depends – health, transport, environment, telecommunications, etc. Five categories of such risks are addressed: natural
disasters, industrial accidents, infectious diseases, terrorism, and food safety. The report does not deal with systemic risks to markets, notably to financial markets, although some aspects of financial systems are considered in the analysis.
The authors determine that the changes likely to affect risks and their management in the coming
years will occur in four contexts: demography, the environment, technology, and socioeconomic structures. They assert that these will reshape conventional hazards and create new ones, modify vulnerability to risks, transform the channels through which accidents spread, and alter society's response. Different forces acting on the same risk can neutralise each other's effects, or reinforce each other for a compound effect.
(adapted from author)
