Risk versus vulnerability: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 15:28, 30 July 2020

In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights.

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Accidents will happen. Four strategies for coping: three focus on the accident, one focuses on your organisation.

Dealing with your organisational model: Assuming accidents will happen, reduce vulnerability to them. Vulnerability comes in the form of unusual concentrations:

Concentration of energy — in a financial services firm, call this financial risk, or profit-and-loss generators
Concentration of population — different models of distributed network. Compare “hub and spoke” models like airports (fragile — take out a hub and large parts of the system are inoperable) with “multiple-node” networks like the internet (robust — take out a node and everything can flow a different way).
Concentration of political/economic power— increases the vulnerability to harm from executive failure.

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 :*Limit damage accidents can cause
 :*Minimise chance that accidents happen
-*'''Dealing with your organisation''': Assuming accidents ''will'' happen, reduce vulnerability to them. Vulnerability comes in the form of unusual [[concentrations]]:
+*'''Dealing with your [[organisational model]]''': Assuming accidents ''will'' happen, reduce vulnerability to them. Vulnerability comes in the form of unusual [[concentrations]]:
 :*Concentration of energy — in a financial services firm, call this financial risk, or profit-and-loss generators
 :*Concentration of population — different models of [[distributed network]]. Compare “hub and spoke” models like airports (fragile — take out a hub and large parts of the system are inoperable) with “multiple-node” networks like the internet (robust — take out a node and everything can flow a different way).
 :*Concentration of political/economic power— increases the vulnerability to harm from [[executive failure]].