The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Systemic risk is, by definition, about links. This page sets out the kinds of dependency that turn local failures into wide losses: causal and physical links between infrastructures, economic links through supply chains and finance, social links through institutions and trust, and ecological links through shared environments. It also explains how the platform analyses those links and what the analysis cannot do. It complements the field overview and the topic on cascades and interdependence.
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For dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on true-colour imagery and land cover, framed on Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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GeographyFor dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on true-colour imagery and land cover, framed on Asia; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
Dependencies and consequences in Systemic Risk Management describe how risk management and systemic risk as well as methods and modelling connect to other systems through physical, economic, social and ecological links, and how stress travels along them toward fields such as those of Policy Nexus and Foresight Nexus. Every dependency map states its assumptions, data and uncertainty; it describes connections, not a forecast.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Power, water, fuel, data and transport link the state of one system to another, often in both directions.
Supply contracts, credit, insurance and common investors carry losses between firms and sectors.
Public confidence, staff availability and institutional capacity can fail together under stress.
Watersheds, soils, climate and biodiversity underpin many systems at once and degrade slowly, then abruptly.
One event hits many components at once: a storm, a software flaw shared by many systems, a pandemic.
A failure in one node raises stress on its neighbours, as in power grids or interbank funding.
Responses amplify the shock: fire sales lower prices, which forces more sales; panic buying empties shelves.
Many depend on one supplier, platform or hub, so its failure has wide reach.
Systemic losses rarely fall where risk decisions were made. A supplier failure may cost a manufacturer some margin while costing a town its main employer. They fall on workers who lose income, on households that lose services, on smaller firms with less buffer and on public budgets that absorb losses no one else can carry. Mapping consequences is therefore part of the analysis, not an afterthought, and it includes losses that are slow to appear, such as lost skills, lost trust and degraded ecosystems.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Interdependency | A two-way dependency between infrastructures, such as power needing telecoms for control while telecoms need power to run. |
| Cascading risk | Risk that a failure in one system or component triggers failures in others that depend on it. |
| Compound event | Two or more hazards or drivers occurring together or in sequence whose joint impact exceeds what either would cause alone, such as drought followed by intense rain; IPCC assessments use the term. |
| Dependency mapping | Tracing the people, processes, technology, facilities and suppliers a service relies on. |
Analysis uses network science and contagion, uncertainty quantification and scenario design and stress testing. Every dependency analysis states its boundaries, data, assumptions and uncertainty. Dependency maps are always incomplete: hidden links, such as shared sub-suppliers or common software components, are often found only after a failure. The analysis is a structured way to look for them; it cannot promise to find them all.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.