Chicken Little goes EU

One of the absolute benefits of being in the EU is that the apparatchiks of Brussels force us to Do The Right Thing. Although successive Irish governments have been not doing the right thing on, say, water quality because it costs more than they believe Joe and Josie Poblacht will countenance. But an expert consultation or a Tribunal? That is something governments can get behind because a) the costs are finite, rather than an indefinite commitment b) there is patronage and nepotism prospects in filling the expert panel.

One of the EU requirements is that each member state is required to engage in future proofing by publishing a national risk assessment NRA every three years. This can be performative box-ticking, as when my binfo project students were obliged to cogitate on whether eye-strain or back-pain was more likely for screen-staring desk-johnnies. That's silly, but unless someone thinks about disasters, we're gonna be wrong-footed and under-prepared when something adverse occurs. On Sunday 19th May 33mm of rain fell on Cappoquin, Co Waterford causing flash flooding: that was a mess and the clean-up costly, but is it likely to happen again in our lifetimes? If so, "we" should do something about it; if not then not.

RTE reported on the 2023 National Risk Assessment NRA carried out by the Government Task Force GTF on Emergency Planning [full PDF] - go TLAs. Essentially the GTF was tasked to think what could possibly co wrong?. A bit like the DNR end of life issues which were codified by the Irish Council for Bioethics 20 years ago. Any risk assessment, National, or otherwise, usually tries to calculate relative risk as the product of an event's impact multiplied by its likelihood; usually on a 1-5 scale for each parameter. I've clipped [R] their assessment of Tech Risks: H Cyber Attack is rated more worrisome than I Undersea Infrastucture, J Gas/Elect outage or K Oil Supply. I guess we weathered the loss of Russian oil 2 years ago? 

impact is  assessed w.r.t. 

• people [1 = less than 20 deaths to 5 = more than 250 deaths; with injuries in proportion]
• environment [1 = local simple to 5 =  heavy widespread long-lasting]
  
• economy [1 = <1% of annual budget i.e. less that €1bn up to  5 = >8% of the budget]
• essential services [ 5 = Failure of services essential for society to work]
  
• society [5 = Community unable to function without significant support]

likelihood is scored: 1 = 100 years between occurrences . . . 5 = happens at least once a year

For the GTF some things were No Worries on a national plan level: Volcanoes Fog RTA Rail-Crash Radiation Civil-Disorder Disinformation Drought Heatwaves Wildfires Hazmat-Accident Structural-Collapse. These events may be Cappoquin serious but are "most appropriately managed at departmental, agency or regional level".

As far as poss, the NRA was evidence driven which is different from headline driven.  Eee but the press do love a car crash and a gangland shooting. These events almost always make the [tut tut watch me be shocked] news and the rest of us have been trained like Pavlov's dogs to respond in like vein. Irish train crash takes precedence over any Indian train crash; unless (bridge-failure + precipice + dozens of dead) applies. Or I guess (train + bomb + dozens of dead) gets the RTE editorial juices going.

Nevertheless, the GTF did canvass public perception and cross-reference this to The Evidence. Which gave them an opportunity to use a coxcomb plot [bloboprev]:

Note that the scale is 0 (well 1 really) to 25: the latter scoring 5 for likelihood x 5 for impact. Mr & Mrs Poblacht are probably over-anxious about water supply and trawlers dredging up the internet but think plane crashes happen elsewhere and rarely. But it just needs one Kegworth on Irish soil and that will change public perception in line with reality.

The GTF identified "Emerging Risks" which they reckoned would make the cut when their successors were required to carry out another NRA in 3, 6, 9 years time: AI; AntiVaxx; Biodiversity loss; Climate change; Drones; Heatwaves; Invasive species; Lithium fires; Super-HGVs [bridge, precipice, I guess?]. The Public were also asked to submit their list of Future Horrors but that generated only 310 responses [clearly the GTF didn't work tooo hard to get the word out, because I would defo have sent in a list of cranky anxieties]. You can track down the 310 list at p.43 of the GTF NRA PDF.