The catastrophic primacy of reactivity over proactivity in governmental risk assessment: brief UK case study

By JuanGarcia @ 2021-09-27T15:53 (+56)

 Picture adapted from the UK's 2020 National Risk Register

Spanish version crossposted to riesgoscatastrogicosglobales.com

Summary

Context: Thanks to the podcast Planning for the Worst by BBC Radio 4 I realized there is plenty of data on how the UK government deals with risk assessment and response, so I decided to run a brief case study on it[1].

Note: The National Risk Register (NRR) of the UK is an official government report that serves as a summary of the assessment of important risks that may affect the country[2].

Two notable examples[3]

Reasons for concern

Why is this important? Though not obvious at first glance, a mindset of taking a risk seriously only after calamity takes place could be catastrophic on many levels, including existential. In Bostrom's words:

“Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach — see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience — is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.”

— Nick Bostrom

Influencing governmental institutions and decision makers to be more proactive in their risk assessment appears to be of existential importance in the long term. Arguably, the UK is actually a leader and pioneer in the field of risk assessment, which does not speak positively as to how other countries may be dealing with high uncertainty, high impact risks that require foresight to prepare against. My experience with Spanish catastrophe preparedness officials has contributed to my belief that a lack of proactivity is widespread in risk assessment worldwide. Whether it is feasible for decision makers to seriously consider and act upon those risks that are not (or are no longer) in the public eye is anyone’s guess.

"The unfamiliar is not the same as the improbable"

— Lord Martin Rees

What are the next risks to which this pattern could apply?

I give two examples closely related to my own experience in global catastrophic risk research:

So, what can be done? Some ideas:

Three broad defence layers, from Defence in Depth Against Human Extinction: Prevention, Response, Resilience, and Why They All Matter by Owen Cotton-Barratt, Max Daniel, and Anders Sandberg.

Call for feedback

Acknowledgements: Thanks to David Denkenberger, Nuño Sempere, Jaime Sevilla, Ray Taylor, Morgan Rivers and Aron Mill for useful suggestions and comments.


  1. Disclaimer: I use the UK as an example because it’s the country I’ve found the most data on, not because I specifically aim to critique the UK’s risk assessment capabilities. I have reasons to believe the problem outlined here is globally pervasive, and in the cases when it’s not the reason is often that the risks outlined by researchers do not even get any significant attention, which is worse. ↩︎

  2. Most countries do not do this, which is bad. The fact that the NRR is open to the public makes it open to criticism, which is useful. I am aware Spain is working on something similar, which is a positive development that I’d like to see in more countries in the future. ↩︎

  3. The 2008’s Great Recession could be another example. The UK was unprepared for it, although some experts had warned against it. However, the response was pretty good compared to many past recessions with a few exceptions globally. Preparedness against this type of risk seems to have improved compared to 2008, so I’d argue this counts as an example of reactivity over proactivity. ↩︎

  4. Additional context by Morgan Rivers: UK has early warning systems in place for detecting solar storms before they arrive, and utility companies are aware of the issue and have engineers on standby to shut off the power to critical transformers in the grid to prevent excessive damage to them. The more expensive renovations, like putting GIC blocking in, still have not been done by the UK to my knowledge, although I believe it's been done in some Scandinavian countries. Other more expensive interventions have not been implemented by the UK. As a relatively small island longitudinally, the islands of the UK are inherently somewhat protected against the worst GICs as its overland power line system length is smaller in extent. On the other hand, it's at a somewhat high northern geomagnetic latitude increasing the risk. ↩︎

  5. Disclaimer: I work as a research associate at ALLFED ↩︎