Re-imagining Risk and Disruption

The Nature of Complex Unbounded Problems
This timely book traces the common attributes of slow and fast-moving disruptions and disasters, from climate change and pandemics to increasingly crowded near-Earth space and nuclear emergencies. It shows how these challenges form, coalesce and cross boundaries, and recommends preventative policies and action.
In a turbulent world, this timely book offers a distinctive exploration of major global challenges. It identifies the shared, underlying attributes of ‘Complex Unbounded Problems’ that make them so challenging and offers insights into how these challenges form – often unnoticed – how they coalesce, cross boundaries, exceed our response capacities and leave a long tail of impacts, exposing unsoundness in both knowledge and policy.

With a particular focus on Earth System change, nuclear power and emergencies, pandemic threats and the risk of cascading crises in near-Earth space, the book explores future directions for tackling risk and disruption, with emphasis on foresight capacity and a better understanding that, since disaster potentials link up, successful responses must do so as well.

Re-imagining Risk and Disruption is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of global environmental change, risk and disasters, security, technological safety and development studies. It will also benefit policymakers and practitioners in NGOs and international organisations working on public health, security, infrastructure and the environment.