Author: Ilan Kelman https://www.ilankelman.org/ and Instagram/Threads/X @ILANKELMAN and Bluesky [ilankelman.bsky.social]ilankelman.bsky.social is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and Professor II at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, integrating climate change into both. Three main areas are: (i) disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy https://www.disasterdiplomacy.org/ ; (ii) island sustainability focusing on safe and healthy living and livelihoods https://www.islandvulnerability.org/ ; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters https://www.riskred.org/
Risks are allegedly increasing, intensifying, and worsening. Irrespective of disputes about quantifying, ranking, and calculating risks, risk jargon is increasing, intensifying, and worsening.
Consider a quartet of c-word descriptors for risks:
- Concurrent risks: Risks at the same place and time—which is the never-ending reality. A high-seismicity zone experiences climate change. A financial meltdown threatens a city which has air pollution. No matter what the risk, others exist simultaneously there and then.
- Cascading risks: One risk sets off another, in a branching chain. Risks, by definition, are connected and have consequences. The question is how far to examine the ripples across space and through time. A flood in Thailand undermines electronics supply chains in Canada. A tsunami in Japan influences nuclear power decisions in Germany for the next century. Risk cascades with diverging and intersecting pathways are the norm.
- Compound risks: Successive and/or simultaneous risks interact and are possibly augmented. This definition combines concurrent and cascading. Risks always layer on each other, sometimes amplifying and sometimes diminishing each other.
- Complex risks: Risks interact and connect, adding analysis and response challenges. With concurrency, cascades, and compounding, risks by definition are complex.
Why have this jargon? Instead, just call them “risks” and then describe usual risk characteristics as being concurrent, cascading, compound, and complex.
When a building might seem likely to collapse during a tornado, the risk is not just about a single structure with this single potential. Long ago and far away, building codes and planning regulations were promulgated, monitored, and enforced—or not. Decisions about siting, design, materials, and maintenance were based on available knowledge—or ignorance. If tornado safety was not adequately accounted for, then safety must be investigated for earthquakes, floods, asbestos fibres, fires, and much more. These concurrences and cascades compound and are complex.
Even more confusing vocabulary manifests. A love of stating the obvious cascades through complex, compound, and concurrent phrases such as “dynamic risk”, “extensive risk”, “extrinsic risk”, “intensive risk”, “intrinsic risk”, “residual risk”, “systematic risk”, and “systemic risk”.
Risk is inherently dynamic, systemic, and systematic. Tornado risk changes over time—by the minute, diurnally, seasonally, and decadally. Failing to redress a known tornado peril is a systems concern and is often systemic.
“Residual risk” is defined as risk which remains after managing or controlling risk. In other words, it is risk.
As for contrasting extensive and intensive, as well as extrinsic and intrinsic, much is definitional. The phrases aim to delineate low-severity and high-severity, low-frequency and high-frequency, and internal and external. All are subjective and sit on continua, rather than being binary.
Some viewpoints express that the environment is an external influence on risks affecting people and infrastructure. Others explain how people, infrastructure, and the environment are inextricably intertwined. How exogenous is a hurricane in hurricane alley during hurricane season?
Axiomatically, everything on Earth is “internal” to risks on Earth, followed by astronomical risks being internal since the Earth sits within outer space. Preferring to separate places and time periods—whether by jurisdictional boundaries, geologic periods, or a specific height above the Earth’s surface to reach outer space—involves arbitrary choices, even if those spatial or temporal lines display a tangible basis. The Kármán Line, the Holocene, and percolines are all jargony too.
This knowledge and its vocabulary are important for understanding and managing risk. The baseline is that it is still “risk”. Risk topics and actions are challenging enough without unnecessary verbiage ubercomplexificatifiying them.