Preparing for complex interdependent risks: a system of systems approach to building disaster resilience

The uncertainty posed by natural and human-made disasters arises from both known risks and a range of unforeseeable risks, some of which may be novel, not having been observed before. These interconnected risks may evolve over short periods of time and may feed into one another. In a network of multiple causes and effects, such risks may not be foreseeable at the disaster preparedness level, and may only be observed at the time of disaster response. This creates a higher level of complexity and requires new approaches with individual organizations and members needing to make decisions outside predefined frameworks and hierarchical command-control structures while still operating in the ethos of their organizations. This study advocates the need for disaster preparedness strategies to go beyond linear approaches to risk management. This is necessary in order to better address complex interdependent risks where such risks may be novel or unforeseen and which may connect in a cascading manner. The resulting causal network needs to be addressed with a networked approach to enrich existing linear approaches by recognizing the need for an interconnected holistic approach to deal appropriately with interconnected risk factors. This paper takes an interpretive perspective rather than the more typical positivist one. System of Systems (SoS) and complex systems thinking were used to inform a sense-making framework to distinguish between approaches to known/knowable and unknown risks. Finally, the paper reports on how this framework was used in South Australia on three different scales of the SoS: community, NGOs and government.