The changing nature of risk and risk management: The challenge of borders, uncertainty and resilience

Abstract

The nature of risk management and the challenges generated by its theory and practice have been in a state of evolution over the past 10 years. This process of evolution has created a number of diffi culties for those involved in the management of risk, who now increas ingly find themselves lacking the necessary capabilities to cope with the nature of this change not least because of the increased volume of infor mation around the various sources of threat and the trans-disciplinary nature of the problems. The dynamic nature of emergent hazards requires new techniques and analytical frameworks for dealing with low probabil ity high consequence events (sometimes termed as 'black swans') (Taleb, 2007) that are contextualized within a highly connected system. The oft quoted 'post-modern5 nature of risk also generates a set of task demands around our understanding of public perceptions, media 'amplification' and the distortion of risks (in both probabilistic and consequential terms), along with their subsequent impacts upon policy making. Policy makers and practitioners, when turning to the academic world for insights, solu tions or at least the important challenges to the dominant worldview, may now be finding the academic field somewhat 'wanting' in this regard. This is because of a number of reasons but may chiefly be because of the multi disciplinary nature of the problems generated by the risk and the difficul ties that many universities have in structuring and supporting research beyond conventional departmental boundaries. In this editorial, we attempt to set out what we consider to be the characteristics of some of the shifts in the nature of risk, and in doing so, hope to initiate an agenda for debate and development that we consider to be of significance to the authors and readers of Risk Management.