Categorie archief: English

Analysis of Risks Europe is facing

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An analysis of current and emerging risks

European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) | 2025

“As Europe stands at the nexus of intensifying global uncertainties, this flagship report on Current and Emerging Risks in Europe marks a critical step in shaping a more prepared and resilient Union. It offers an integrated scientific analysis of 47 diverse risks-from climate-driven disasters and pandemics to cyber threats and geopolitical instability-highlighting the urgent need for cross-sectoral, whole-of-society action.

Our Member States rightly expect the European Union to anticipate risks and threats and protect them from cascading crises through a coordinated and proactive approach to addressing the evolving risk landscape.

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UN Global Risk Report

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United Nations | July 2025

The first-ever United Nations Global Risk Report 2024 has been released, offering insights from over 1,100 experts and stakeholders on the most pressing global risks and the world’s preparedness to address them. The report, based on a global survey conducted in 2024, assesses the perceptions of these risks across societal, technological, economic, environmental, and political categories. It highlights the interconnectedness of these risks and emphasizes the need for a more united and multilateral approach to strengthen the world’s capacity to anticipate, adapt, and respond to future challenges, according to the report. 


António Guterres: “We are at a defining moment for humanity. In a year marked by converging global crises, the international community faces mounting pressure to strengthen our collective capacity to anticipate and respond to shared risks.

This report, drawing on data collected in 2024, offers a valuable snapshot of how stakeholders around the world—governments, the private sector, academia, and civil society—perceive global risks and assess the multilateral system’s readiness to address them.

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Chronic Risks Analysis

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Cabinet Office and Government Office for Science, United Kingdom | | 8 July 2025

The Chronic Risks Analysis (CRA) is the UK Government’s first bespoke risk assessment for medium to long term risks. It complements the National Risk Register (NRR), which focuses on the UK’s most serious acute risks. The 26 chronic risks identified by the UK Government cover seven themes, spanning across Security, Technology and Cybersecurity, Geopolitical, Environmental, Societal, Biosecurity and Economic issues.

The Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: “The world order is shifting at breakneck speed. A once-in-a-generation pandemic, war on the continent of Europe, a cost of living crisis, fluctuations in global energy and financial markets – all within the past decade. But in this period of upheaval, the first duty of any Government remains the same: keeping the public safe.

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PRIMO Kaleidoscope

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Education for good public governance*

PRIMO | April 2012

Introduction

Kaleidoscope is an internationally developed educational program that provides a holistic, dialogue-oriented approach to public risk. Discussing relevant themes such as cybersecurity, social cohesion, city management, adaptation to climate change, proper water management, and added-value through partnership, and getting familiar with the best concepts, methods, and techniques to manage risk, and learning from authoritative scientists and practitioners. 

The program provides insight into how public values and risks intersect, as well as how to design effective governance mechanisms. The education program consists of three main perspectives and is offered in a modular format with capita selecta:

  1. Craftsmanship of risk management (general overview of risks, drivers, frameworks, techniques).
  2. Establishment and governance of specific values (i.e., topic-related approach of risk, resilience, scenarios, from the organisation and client perspective).
  3. Personal skills (how to act, interact, communicate, learn, and develop yourself).
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Think Tank ‘From Global to Local’ 2014

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Gérard Combe and Jack Kruf, board members of the international PRIMO Europe association, proposed the idea at their May 2013 meeting in Brussels to bring global developments to local governments through a think tank model.

Union des Dirigeants Territoriaux de l’Europe (UDITE), the foremost professional network for Chief Executives and senior managers in the public sector in Europe and Public Risk Management Organisation (PRIMO), the leading international network for the development of products and the dissemination of knowledge and strategic information for the public sector in Europe, joined forces to launch the Think Tank ‘From Global to Local’. It is considered a formal joint project between the two organisations. It was elaborated and applied in the first Think Tank, held in Amsterdam.

The first Think Tank in March 2014 was organised by Jack Kruf, in close cooperation with Eric Frank (director of PRIMO Nederland), and Ronny Frederickx (member of the Executive Committee of UDITE). He was accompanied by Marie Dequae (University of Gent), Ed Mallens (ISO 31000 expert and risk manager), and John O’Dea (president of PRIMO Malta). 

It was agreed that it would be a formal collaboration where content meets craftsmanship, and that global risks should be discussed from the perspective of local and regional governance.

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Public Governance

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Marjolein van Asselt and Ortwin Renn | 2011

The term ‘governance’ has been used in political science to describe the multitude of actors and processes that lead to collective binding decisions. The term ‘risk governance’ involves the translation of the substance and core principles of governance to the context of risk‐related decision‐making. Does it involve a major change on how risks are conceptualized, managed, and communicated, or it is just a new fashion?

In this paper, we aim to delineate the genesis and analytical scope of risk governance. In our view, risk governance pertains to the various ways in which many actors, individuals, and institutions, public and private, deal with risks surrounded by uncertainty, complexity, and/or ambiguity.

It emphasizes that not all risks are simple; they cannot be calculated as a function of probability and effect. It is more than a descriptive shorthand for a complex, interacting network in which collective binding decisions are taken around a particular set of societal issues.

The ambition is that risk governance provides a conceptual as well as normative basis for how to deal responsibly with uncertain, complex, and/or ambiguous risks in particular. We propose to synthesize the body of scholarly ideas and proposals on the governance of systemic risks in a set of principles: the communication and inclusion principle, the integration principle, and the reflection principle.

This set of principles should be read as a synthesis of what needs to be seriously considered in organizing structures and processes to govern risks.

Bibliography

Van Asselt, M., & Renn, O. (2011). Risk governance. Journal of Risk Research, 14(4), 431–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2011.553730

Risk

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The Policy Implications of Risk Compensation and Plural Rationalities

John Adams | 1995

Quote from prologue: “This book began as a collaborative venture with Michael Thompson. For over 15 years my research into risk, mainly on the road, was focused on the theory of “risk compensation”. This theory accords primacy in the explanation of accidents to the human propensity to take risks. The theory postulates that we all come equipped with “risk thermostats” and suggests that safety interventions that do not affect the setting of the thermostat are likely to be frustrated by behavioural responses that reassert the level of risk with which people were originally content. My research had noted that there were large variations in the settings of individual thermostats, but had little to say about why this should be so.

About ten years ago I read Michael’s article “Aesthetics of risk” (Thompson 1980), and about five years later met the man himself. His research into risk over the past 20 years has been central to the development of a perspective that has come to be known as “cultural theory” (Thompson et al. 1990). Risk, according to this perspective, is culturally constructed; where scientific fact falls short of certainty we are guided by assumption, inference and belief. In such circumstances the deterministic rationality of classical physics is replaced by a set of conditional, probabilistic rationalities.

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