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  • 2010
  • Chapter
  • Integrative Risk Management: Advanced Disaster Recovery

Understanding and Coping with the Increasing Risk of System-Level Accidents

By: Dutch Leonard and Arnold M. Howitt
  • Format:Print
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Abstract

The world has seen a number of recent events in which major systems came to a standstill, not from one cause alone but from the interaction of a combination of causes. System-level accidents occur when anomalies or errors in different parts of an interconnected system negatively reinforce one another, spiraling up out of control until they eventually drive the system outside of its sustainable boundaries, resulting in system "collapse." Systems with multiple components that are tightly linked to one another are prone to such events. Increasingly, our industrial, commercial, and social systems are coming to have the characteristics that predict system-level accidents-in some cases, driven by consistent economic forces that cause tighter interconnections to form within existing systems-and there seems to be a rising frequency of such events. Since we inhabit an increasingly tightly interconnected global collection of such systems, finding ways to reduce and to manage systemic risk is an important priority.

Keywords

Economics; Globalization; Risk Management; Boundaries; System Shocks

Citation

Leonard, Dutch, and Arnold M. Howitt. "Understanding and Coping with the Increasing Risk of System-Level Accidents." In Integrative Risk Management: Advanced Disaster Recovery, edited by Simon Woodward. Zurich, Switzerland: Swiss Re, Centre for Global Dialogue, 2010.

About The Author

Dutch Leonard

General Management
→More Publications

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  • Key Success Factors in Environmental Entrepreneurship: The Case of Wilderness Safaris By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Woods and Herman B. Leonard
  • Wilderness Safaris: Responses to the COVID-19 Crisis By: James E. Austin, Megan Epler Wood and Herman B. "Dutch" Leonard
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