Derbyshire James
Middlesex University Business School, London, UK.
Risk Anal. 2022 Jan;42(1):97-104. doi: 10.1111/risa.13827. Epub 2021 Sep 20.
A striking feature of COVID-19 is many countries' low level of preparedness for it, despite pandemics being a known threat. This raises a question as to the reasons for this underpreparedness. While preparedness should have better reflected pandemics' long-run inevitability and potentially catastrophic impact, government-planning horizons are short term, and the attentiveness of policymakers is bounded and subject to multiple demands. Preparedness is therefore affected by the fundamental uncertainty surrounding the exact nature, timing, and impact of a pandemic. While a subjective probability is attributable to such an event's occurrence, just like it is any other, if founded on scant knowledge and perceived as being low it may inhibit preparedness. Under such circumstances, preparedness may be better served by a focus on plausibility. Moreover, any tendency for policymakers to disregard highly uncertain, low-probability, yet highly impactful events of this type is exacerbated by their "fat-tailed" distribution, which obscures their potential extremity. This article considers how plausibility-based scenario planning can increase preparedness for extreme events like a global pandemic, thereby reducing overconfidence in continued business-as-usual in their face, and emphasizing precaution in their wake. In so doing, the article contributes to what in this journal has recently been called "type B," "generic and fundamental" risk science, which is concerned with identifying better ways to present and communicate uncertainties. In focusing on plausibility-based scenario planning, the article highlights a method seldom previously discussed in relation to risk science, yet one that can contribute much to this type B component of it.
新冠疫情的一个显著特征是，尽管大流行是已知的威胁，但许多国家对其防范水平较低。这就引发了一个问题，即造成这种防范不足的原因是什么。虽然防范措施本应更好地反映大流行的长期必然性及其潜在的灾难性影响，但政府的规划视野是短期的，政策制定者的注意力有限且受到多种需求的制约。因此，防范措施受到围绕大流行的确切性质、时间和影响的基本不确定性的影响。虽然可以像对待其他任何事件一样，为这样一个事件的发生归因一个主观概率，但如果基于匮乏的知识且被认为概率较低，它可能会抑制防范措施。在这种情况下，关注似真性可能更有助于做好防范。此外，政策制定者忽视此类高度不确定、低概率但影响重大的事件的任何倾向，会因其“厚尾”分布而加剧，这种分布掩盖了它们潜在的极端性。本文探讨了基于似真性的情景规划如何能够增强对全球大流行等极端事件的防范能力，从而减少面对此类事件时对照常行事的过度自信，并在事件发生后强调预防措施。通过这样做，本文为该期刊最近所称的“B类”“通用和基础”风险科学做出了贡献，这类风险科学关注的是找出更好地呈现和传达不确定性的方法。在聚焦基于似真性的情景规划时，本文突出了一种此前很少在风险科学中讨论的方法，但这种方法能够对其B类组成部分做出很大贡献。
