Exploring future Arctic maritime risks & responses


 

 

 

Client

UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)

1

Futures Approach

Researching & developing a Wild Cards exploratory scenarios workshop

Form of engagement

Collaboration

Arctic Risks & Wild Cards: a collaboration with UCL

 

September 2014

 

As part of the arcticfutures project, I was delighted to be asked to collaborate with the Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) at University College London in their ‘Arctic Risk Forum’ event held earlier this month.

This one day workshop brought together a range of participants from across business and academia with the intention of discussing key areas of operational/development risk via the exploration of two incident scenarios involving a cruise ship north of Svalbard and also an exploration oil well blow-out in the Kara Sea.

As an extension to the scenario process, I designed a range of related ‘wild card’ themes to be used in two participatory group exercises as a way of engaging participants thinking, challenging their assumptions and also conveying key aspects of wider risk management such as the potential for concurrent and cascading incidents.

I sought to highlight the role of disputed credibility in how wild cards ideas are accepted by audiences, how groups can fall into ‘paradigm blindness’ by only interacting with narratives perceived as plausible and also how risk perception frameworks can vary from those based solely on quantitative approaches to those aiming to understand the wider cultural norms involved in different interpretations of threat salience. I suggested adopting a ‘messy’ approach – based on uncovering the diversity inherent in multiple perspectives – could offer significant value.

I also aimed to demonstrate how using scenarios and wild cards as a tool to investigate knowledge gaps in response preparedness is linked to notions of anticipation, emergent conditions and future perspectives on change. Time precluded us from a fuller consideration of the longer term second and third order implications within the scenarios (and their wild card extensions) but this is something I’d welcome a chance of working with the Institute on again in the future.

Anecdotally, I was intrigued when the ‘Dark Tourism’ wild card initially elicited laughter from the group engaging with it before its normative implications became more apparent to them. I offer a snippet from its description below:

Undertaking a cruise in the same area, the SV Arctic Pearl (with 200 passengers on board) monitored overnight communications indicating a crisis incident had been declared. [It] proceeded to the incident site and arrived there at 15.00hrs in the afternoon while the passenger recovery process was still underway.

 

Beset by requests from his own passengers, the Captain allowed them to disembark into inflatables to enable them to view the sinking ship and rescue activities more closely.

#arcticsinking

 

 

Wild Card Deck

How did this work contribute to UCL IRDR?

 

Further collaboration with UCL IRDR

A report on the outcomes of the meeting in which the Wild Cards were explored was published as evidence to the House of Lords Arctic Subcommittee by UCL IRDR in October 2014

 

 

Please cite as Lishman (ed.), 2014. Arctic risk: a discussion of the possible outcomes of two disaster scenarios. UCL IRDR Special Report 2014-02

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/rdr/publications/irdr-special-reports/irdr-special-report-2014-01

 

June 2016

  • It was a pleasure to be invited to speak at the Development in the Arctic: Risks and Rewards public panel discussion event in London presented by UCL’s Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction as part of its 3-day Total Ice Seminar.
  • I offered some thoughts on Arctic inclusivity and narratives, long term climate risks and state-changes, sustainability, key drivers of change, historic patterns in Arctic development, emergence of human development, 50 year risk scenarios and the recent contested role of global inititives such as the Arctic Investment Protocol.
  • Key provocations

    • Climate change and technological advances are opening up the Arctic for exploitation by the world – or so we are told. But what do we really know about development risks and rewards in the far north? What realities of Arctic environmental conditions are rarely described? What Arctic social and political conditions are frequently bypassed? What about the people who live in the region who have rights and interests?
    • This panel discussion explores the risks and rewards regarding the so-called ‘Arctic Gold Rush’ for resources and development.
  • Panellists
    • Dr. Ilan Kelman, Reader in Risk Resilience and Global Health in UCL IRDR and UCL IGH
    • Guy Yeomans, founder of Arctic Futures
    • Dr. Nina Poussenkova, Executive Director of Sampo Energy and Environment Research Limited
    • Kaj Riska, Ice Engineer at TOTAL E&P

 

Other organisations arcticfutures has collaborated with

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