Cascade risk

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The term cascade risk denotes a latent risk that manifests itself in the form of a sequence ( cascade ) of errors of various kinds, often triggered by minor internal or external causes ( triggers ) . This continues in tightly coupled technical or socio-technical or socio-ecological systems or networks ever faster and / or with catastrophic consequences and leads to the failure of one sub-system after the other - possibly to total system failure. One reason for the often catastrophic course is that in closely coupled systems the number of critical network nodes, the failure of which leads to the network no longer functioning, is lower than in systems that are isolated from one another or only loosely coupled.

Depending on the extent to which they spread, a distinction is made between risks and damage first (e.g. damage to property), second (e.g. loss of production), third (e.g. trade balance risks) and possibly fourth order (e.g. consequential social costs). Risk cascades particularly threaten industrialized countries, megacities , energy and data networks. Cascading risks must also be taken into account when analyzing climate-related corporate risks.

Examples

An example of a cascading failure of a network is the blackout of the Italian power grid on September 28, 2003. At that time, the failure of a power plant led to interruptions in Internet communication, which in turn impacted the power grid and gradually led to an extensive blackout . So it was a self-reinforcing interaction process between two systems.

The sinking of the British battleship Prince of Wales in 1941 by a chance hit is an example of the spread of initial damage to more and more systems of very different types.

The rupture of the Banqiao Dam in China in 1975 led to the rupture of 61 other dams, thus affecting linearly linked systems of the same type: This was the special case of the domino effect .

The cascading course of the Fukushima catastrophe from March 11 to 16, 2011 and its consequences on the economy and society as well as possible interactions between climate and financial risks were also analyzed from the perspective of cascade risks. The effects of the Fukushima disaster are also propagating through the trophic cascade in the biosystem of the entire North Pacific .

Examples from the non-technical area are the European debt crisis of 2011, which intensified due to the interaction between politics and the banking system, or the increased AIDS risk for drug users due to intensive sexual in-group contact.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ On the concept of narrow coupling: Charles Perrow : Normal disasters: The inevitable risks of large-scale technology. Campus, Frankfurt 1992, as well as Egon Becker and Engelbert Schramm : Coupled systems. For modeling and forecasting social-ecological transformations . In: Ingrid Balzer, Monika Wächter (Ed.): Social-ecological research. Results of the exploratory projects from the BMBF funding priority. Ökom, Munich 2002, 361-376 and, based on this, Florian Keil u. a .: Systemic Risk Governance for Pharmaceutical Residues in Drinking Water. GAIA Vol. 17 (4), 2008, pp. 349-354
  2. ^ Atomic catastrophe in Tokyo would not be manageable ( Memento of July 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Accessed December 24, 2011
  3. ↑ a b Mathias Onischka, Definition of Climate Risks and Systematisation in Risk Cascades , 2009
  4. ^ Minerva Center and Department of Physics , Bar-Ilan University
  5. ^ Charles Perrow Fukushima and the Inevitability of Accidents. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Vol. 67 (6), 2011, pp. 44-52.
  6. ↑ Houdou Basse Mama & Alexander Bassen: Contagion effects in the electric utility industry Following the Fukushima nuclear accident. Applied Economics Vol. 45 (24), 2013, pp. 3421-3430.
  7. ↑ Stephan Moldzio u. a., On the impact of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on the Pacific and food chains. July 7, 2011. Accessed January 15, 2017
  8. ↑ Alliance at 6-year low in: www.wallstreet-online.de, accessed December 24, 2011
  9. ↑ Helmut Lukesch, The Spread of AIDS-Relevant Behaviors in Young Adults , accessed December 24, 2011