Despite extensive scientific progress in the field of risk analysis in risk analysis, broad consensus has not been established on fundamental concepts and principles. The field of risk analysis still suffers from a lack of clarity with regard to many key concepts. This lack of conceptual clarity is especially striking with regard to systemic risks. The Project Systemic Risks at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany aims at clarifying key concepts and assumptions of risk research. On the basis of our research, we claim that systemic risks are characterized by a high degree of complexity, uncertainty, and ambiguity in addition of spreading out to other risk areas and risk arenas. Second, systemic risks are transboundary and global in nature. They transgress nation states and call for international cooperation. This characteristic becomes especially apparent with regard to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Third, although systemic risks originate in one subsystem of society or the environment, the ripple effects of these risks affect all social subsystems, such as the economy, politics, and civil society. These multi-causal interdependencies pose great governance challenges and lead to the fact that systemic risks are unmanageable by single organizations. Fourth, future technological and societal developments are non-linear. Science struggles to identify tipping points of technological and social trends. Furthermore, systemic risks are socially constructed and amplified via risk perception and social mobilization. Framing of risks and social acceptability are of essence. Therefore, systemic risks require a more holistic approach to hazard identification, risk assessment and risk management because investigating systemic risks goes beyond the usual agent-consequence analysis. Consequentially, the analysis of systemic risks ought to focus on interdependencies and ripple and spill-over effects that initiate impact cascades between otherwise unrelated risk clusters. Our understanding of systemic risk spans various scientific disciplines. The complex structure of triggers and consequences demands new efforts for modeling and simulating systemic risks. Therefore, we look into scientific fields that have accumulated experience in modeling complex and dynamic structures and processes, i.e. evolutionary economics, thermodynamics and dynamic systems analysis. Our aim is to identify typical patterns of emerging structures that can be applied to improve our understanding and facilitate quantitative modeling of systemic risks.
The presentation will investigate these topics, drawing on data from the interdisciplinary research project Systemic Risks at IASS. Special attention will be paid to resilient governance processes which allow for social learning and correspond with pluralistic societies.