Advancing Systemic Risk Assessment for Complex, Interdependent Systems: A Research Agenda

Area of Science:

• Engineering
• Risk Management
• Systems Science

Background:

• Traditional engineering risk assessment focuses on direct impacts, insufficient for complex, interdependent systems.
• Societal risks increasingly arise from interconnected systems, revealing limitations of conventional methods.
• Cascading consequences and uncertainty are poorly captured by existing risk assessment approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a taxonomy of risk assessment methods to guide research and development.
• Classify methods based on their ability to assess diverse consequences and systemic behaviors.
• Address the gap in assessing systemic risks inherent in complex societal challenges.

Main Methods:

• Developed a taxonomy classifying risk assessment methods into three tiers.
• Tier 1: Direct impacts; Tier 2: Cascading consequences in interconnected systems; Tier 3: Emergent, transformative, and uncertain dynamics.
• Identified key system and knowledge characteristics challenging current methods.

Main Results:

• Proposed a three-tier taxonomy for risk assessment methods based on consequence and behavior assessment capabilities.
• Highlighted the limitations of current methods in addressing systemic risks.
• Outlined research priorities for advancing systemic risk assessment.

Conclusions:

• A new taxonomy is essential for developing advanced risk assessment methods.
• Future research must focus on analyzing consequences, structuring uncertainty, and improving causal inference.
• The proposed research agenda aims to enhance methods for addressing complex systemic risks.