Insights from the Covid-19 pandemic for systemic risk assessment and management

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has activated hundreds of interdependent long-lasting risks across all sectors of society. Zoonotic diseases are on the rise, fuelled by climatic change, by encroachment and destruction of habitats, and by unsustainable practices. Risk assessment and management must be greatly improved to prevent even worse consequences than COVID-19 if the next pandemic is caused by an agent with higher infectiousness and lethality. Insights from a project on systemic pandemic risk management reveal that the interdependency of risks creates cascading effects mediated by millions of vicious cycles which must be addressed to gain control over a pandemic. We propose a method for systemic, cross-sectoral risk assessment that detects the myriad of causal influences resulting from the risks, allowing to identify and mitigate the most potent risks, i.e., those participating in the highest numbers of vicious loops.

Rights

The accepted author manuscript is restricted to University of Strathclyde Repository staff only until 14 April 2024. In the meantime to request a copy for personal use, please use the "request a copy" button on their repository record.

Cite as

Downloadable citations

Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04170-9_9

Repository URI

https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/81130/