As Covid-19 has shown, the risks we are facing are changing. The pandemic has led to unprecedented levels of uncertainty and shock across the world. Emerging risks such as space-weather has the potential for causing impacts beyond everyday experience. These risks do not respect borders, and they are likely to have an international impact and will require an international response.
The world we live in has morphed into a complex web of connected systems that support our way of life. A reliance on electricity, the internet, and the GPS systems we use daily has left us vulnerable to space weather events that pose a serious risk to systems on which our food, fuel, and essential services rely. If GPS systems go down, we will not be able to navigate, use the stock exchange or even withdraw cash from cash machines.
The risk assessment of space weather in terms of likelihood is immersed in uncertainty. The likelihood of a space weather event cannot be accurately quantified, and any risk assessment built on a Likelihood-Impact matrix can be misleading and leads to a false sense of confidence, particularly in terms of prioritization of risk.
Moreover, our risk management systems must be dynamic and have robust processes in place to identify Black Swan events. Risk planning must focus on the impact of extreme risks in terms of linked, and cascading secondary risks triggered by these extreme risks and focusing on the common consequences triggered by these events, so that we are able to better anticipate, prepare and respond to a range of challenging scenarios, including those which we never experienced before.
In this educational piece by Lawrence Habahbeh we look at space weather risk.