All-hazards governance
An all-hazards approach asks what institutions must be able to do whatever the shock: a flood, a pandemic, a grid failure, a cyber incident or a conflict that disrupts supply. Many duties repeat across hazards, such as early warning, continuity, coordination, public communication and recovery, and shocks increasingly arrive together and cascade. The Global Risks Forum (GRF) convenes the institutions that hold these duties so that roles are agreed and tested once, across hazards, rather than improvised separately for each. Decisions remain with the competent authorities.
- 01In briefThe short answer
- 02Common dutiesDuties that repeat across hazards
- 03Core capabilitiesThe duties that recur whatever the hazard
- 04CascadesMapping the second and third failure
- 05Cascading shocksWhen one failure triggers another
- 06How GRF works on itFrom mapping to testing
- 07Related areasWhere to go next
GRF · Institution · service level R0
The short answer.
All-hazards governance asks what institutions must be able to do whatever the shock: a flood, a pandemic, a grid failure, a cyber incident or a conflict that disrupts supply. Many duties repeat across hazards, such as warning, continuity, coordination, communication and recovery, and GRF convenes the institutions that hold them.
Infrastructure networks in World.
Major roads, railways, ports and airports, and the density of the transport network, in World.
Duties that repeat across hazards.
| Duty | The governance question |
|---|---|
| Risk oversight | Who maintains a shared view of risks across sectors, and who is accountable for acting on it? |
| Early warning and anticipatory action | Who issues warnings, who acts on them and what is pre-agreed before a threshold is crossed? Warnings stay with the authorities that issue them. |
| Continuity | Which services must keep running, and which dependencies could stop them? |
| Coordination | How do authorities, operators and humanitarian actors work together when mandates overlap? |
| Public communication | Who speaks, with what evidence, and how is uncertainty communicated? |
| Recovery and learning | Who decides recovery priorities, and how do lessons change arrangements? |
The duties that recur whatever the hazard.
Emergency management practice has converged on a capability view: whatever the trigger, institutions must warn, shelter, keep critical services running, protect the most exposed people, communicate and restore. The Sendai Framework asks states to strengthen disaster risk governance across all hazards, natural and human-made, including biological and technological, and the midterm review political declaration of 2023 called for more attention to systemic and cascading risk.
| Capability | Typical holder | Common gap a dialogue can expose |
|---|---|---|
| Warning and alerting | Hydrometeorological service, civil protection, health authority | Warnings issued by one body but acted on by another without an agreed format |
| Continuity of critical services | Utilities, transport and telecom operators, regulators | Dependency of one operator on another's power or data not written into either plan |
| Mass care and shelter | Municipalities, social services, Red Cross and Red Crescent societies | Shelter plans that assume transport or water that the hazard removes |
| Public information | Government communications, broadcasters, platforms | No agreed voice when several authorities speak at once |
Mapping the second and third failure.
A heatwave raises electricity demand, lowers thermal plant output through cooling-water limits and stresses hospitals at the same moment. An all-hazards dialogue traces such chains with the operators who hold each link, then asks which institution sees the cascade first and who is authorised to act on it. The critical infrastructure platform at GCRI holds the dependency science; GRF records the agreements about who watches and who decides.
- Format: a scenario walk-through with operators and regulators, one hazard at a time, then the same chain under a second hazard.
- Output: a dependency table with an owner per link and an escalation route, published with participants' consent.
- Follow-up: selected chains proposed for a controlled exercise in the annual programme.
When one failure triggers another.
Systems depend on systems
Hospitals depend on power and water; payments depend on telecommunications; food depends on transport and energy.
Shocks arrive together
A heatwave can strain a grid, a health system and a food supply at once, and each strain makes the others harder to manage.
Failures spread between mandates
Cascades travel through the gaps between institutions that plan only for their own hazard or sector.
From mapping to testing.
- 01
Map duties and dependencies
Convene the institutions that hold each duty, and map where their arrangements depend on one another, with evidence from The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI).
- 02
Agree roles across hazards
Record which arrangements hold across hazards and which must be specific, including who decides at each threshold.
- 03
Test cascades
Propose controlled exercises in Nexus Universe that test how arrangements behave when shocks compound.
- 04
Record and renew
Publish findings with their limits and track improvement items into the next annual agenda.
GRF is not an emergency service and holds no incident command. It does not regulate, finance, procure or certify.
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Multi-hazard | The multiple major hazards a place faces and the contexts in which they occur together or in sequence. |
| Cascading risk | Risk that a failure in one system or component triggers failures in others that depend on it. |
| Business continuity | The capability of an organization to continue delivering products and services within acceptable time frames during disruption, in ISO terms. |
| Crisis management | Coordinated leadership of a major incident across technical, business, legal and communication functions. |
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Questions and answers.
Does all-hazards mean ignoring specific hazards?
Who leads an all-hazards dialogue?
Can we test our arrangements?
Around GRF.
Start with an enquiry.
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.