Anticipatory Risk Management

Risks allow a probability calculation; uncertainties do not. The incalculability of uncertainties may depend on many different factors. It may be that one does not have all the relevant information and that by collecting more information one may eventually deduce the distribution of the relevant events. However, this chapter’s claim is stronger than that: it claims that uncertain events are such that no increase of available information will allow their treatment as risks. The uncertainty of uncertain events is structural and does not depend on a lack of information. We shall distinguish uncertainty arising from incomplete knowledge (epistemic uncertainty) from uncertainty inherent in the system (ontological uncertainty). The former is a kind of risk, the latter is uncertainty proper. Risk and uncertainty pertain to two different classes of events and there is no crossable boundary between them. The vast majority of future events are uncertain in the sense specified. Put otherwise, only a tiny minority of future events are amenable to probability assessments. The difference between risks and uncertainties shows that the expression “risk management” is far from adequate, since it explicitly refers only to risks (calculable events) and sidelines uncertainties (incalculable events). On the other hand, both risks and uncertainties should be addressed. By adding a reference to anticipation, the expression “anticipatory risk management” suggests a perhaps less inadequate coverage of the field.