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Systemic risk

Systems can be affected by critical events or shocks that occur outside or within the system. Systemic risk is associated with cascading impacts that spread within and across systems and sectors via the movements of people, goods, capital and information within and across boundaries. The spread of cascading impacts can lead to potentially existential consequences and system collapse across a range of time horizons.

A drought thousands of miles away might seem distant—but its effects can reach your doorstep.
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Latest Systemic Risk additions in the Knowledge Base

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Training course
Online
Systems Change x Behavioural Science for Climate Action
The Systems Change x Behavioural Science for Climate Action course empowers young leaders to address climate challenges through systems thinking and behavioural science.
  • United Nations System Staff College
A nation of disasters: lessons on systemic risks and cascading impacts from Malawi's COVID-19 experienc thumbnail
Documents and publications
A nation of disasters: lessons on systemic risks and cascading impacts from Malawi's COVID-19 experience

This study shows how COVID-19, floods, and cholera interacted in Malawi to produce cascading social, economic, and governance impacts, while also revealing the value of adaptive social protection and multi-hazard risk management.

Risk Analysis (Wiley)
Cascading impacts of natural disasters in a connected world thumbnail
Documents and publications
Cascading impacts of natural disasters in a connected world

Extreme climate-related disasters create interconnected cascading impacts across sectors and regions, making it essential to improve global risk modelling and management systems.

Science
Pattern with warming stripes from Earth global average surface temperature
Update
‘Update climate change risks list to avoid worst impacts’

The world currently lacks an authoritative and up-to-date assessment of climate change risks, say a group of experts writing in the journal Nature.

University of Reading
Drought in Somalia
Update
Flash droughts: Why speed, not scarcity, is the new systemic risk

Flash droughts are severe droughts that rapidly intensify over weeks rather than seasons, desiccating land and ravaging livelihoods without warning. Such droughts are becoming a defining systemic risk.

Council on Foreign Relations, The (CFR)
Case study
Australia
Strengthening resilience to extreme heat: an Adelaide case study
This place-based case study explores how heat manifests in an urban context through a systems lens, examining interconnected roles. A fictional family narrative runs alongside the analysis, bringing systemic risks to life.
  • Australian Red Cross
  • Institute for Social and Environmental Transition - International (ISET)
  • Monash University
  • International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)
  • Zurich Insurance Group Limited
Mudslide blocking a road in Costa Rica
Update
The shifting pattern of landslide risk in cities – an interesting case study from Medellín

A fascinating case study from the 24 June 2025 Granizal landslide in Medellín, Colombia, which killed 27 people and destroyed 50 homes, shows demonstrates that it is not just the urban poor that are exposed to landslides.

Eos - AGU
Assessing the cascading impacts of natural hazards on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) using Scotland as a case study thumbnail
Documents and publications
Assessing the cascading impacts of natural hazards on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) using Scotland as a case study

This paper explores the cross-sectoral cascading impacts of extreme weather events on Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) to evidence the interconnected vulnerabilities across energy, water, transport and telecommunications.

npj Natural Hazards (Nature)
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