۱٫ Introduction This essay considers lessons for those engaged in studying and communicating extreme risks, drawing from experience and reflection on the management of the full range of risks considered in the policy environment. There are two principal reasons why these lessons provide a good starting point for consideration of catastrophic risks. The first is that there are now many decades of practice and reflection on such risk management to draw from, and the second is that it is this more frequent experience of mainstream risks that strongly shapes the way decision-makers and publics initially engage with extreme risk.

۲٫ Some ways in which science informs national risk management in the UK

۲٫۱٫ The UK’s National Risk Register

In the UK system of management of civil risks, national government is responsible for setting the frameworks for action by others, including the emergency services and local authorities. “Risk management” here typically refers to reasonably well-defined risks, which materialise rapidly. Risk itself is defined as the harm multiplied by the likelihood of that harm. Every government department, like every major business and University, has a risk register that includes financial, operational, reputational risks. But the most visible and consistent expression of risk at national level is the National Risk Register (NRR), the result of systematic and regular exercises led by the Cabinet Office, to improve risk management and to provide a public resource for individuals and organisations wishing to be better prepared for emergencies (The National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies, 2015). Within the NRR the principal risks are summarised in a matrix of probability against impact. The identification and examination of the risks is informed by operational and scientific expertise, with the latter largely coordinated by the Government Chief Scientific Advisor (see Section 2.2). Not all these risks have crystallised in living memory. For example, there has not been a major solar flare since the Carrington event in 1859. But in all cases of risks on the NRR the assessors either have access to historic records of the events or, in the case of risks such as major flooding, experience of smaller versions of the same type of risk. In preparing the Register, there are also discussions about the very long list of potential risks, some without human historical records, such as the effect of impact from a Near Earth Object. Once risks get on to the Register, there is a system for ensuring responsibility for planning and acting to mitigate the risk. It helps that many of the actions – dealing with rubble, or loss of communications, for example – are common to risks with quite different causes. So the purpose of defining and prioritising the risk is very definitely to inform action. And in the context of government at any level, the marginal spend or marginal moment of organisational focus on risk management is in competition with spend or focus on the very immediate, very visible, challenges and opportunities that are always present in the public sector. In some ways, this is the body politic mimicking the brain. A psychologist might simplify things by saying that our brains are not designed primarily to find out the truth about things but to keep us alive and that, although these purposes overlap they do not always align perfectly. So, in policy and implicitly in public discourse, the question of why we are discussing a risk matters greatly. The first questions a listener, whether a policy professional or a member of the public, are likely to be asking are “what does this mean for me, and what can I do about it”. For deeply unfamiliar extreme risks this response poses a particular challenge. The best advice may be to conduct more research but, if it is the researchers themselves advising that, the advice will naturally be met with suspicion.