Prevention of Surprise

Abstract

Today there is common agreement that human actions are resulting in increasingly large-scale — even global — risks. Yet there seems to be a universal inability to stop these human, environmental and economic effects. In this chapter we consider the management of surprise in the framework of a wide spectrum of hazard levels. For instance, a reduction in greenhouse gases might reduce the probability of extreme climate changes. We have developed a general model for controlling extreme hazards. We first examine the dynamic behavior of a single global society and derive various optimal response strategies to counter the hazard. However, in real life such a global hazard management system does not exist due to a lack of international cooperation among nation states. A gaming model is constructed to elaborate the implications of hazard management when more nations are involved, and when expectations about the hazard are imperfect. While the models involved in this analysis are simple, the results from our numerical experiments are instructive and yield interesting insights into the economics of various institutions governing the interaction of societies and their capacity to mitigate risks. We discuss the outcome of the models in terms of its bearing on modern politics as well as what it might mean to the dangers that await us in the future.