Risk management for pandemics: a novel approach: “Hindsight is 20/20” English proverb

The impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the global-level sensitivity to such threats. As understanding of major hazards is generally based on past experience and there is a lack of good historical precedents, approaches and models currently employed to assess risks and guide responses generally lack transparency and are often associated with huge, unspecified uncertainties. Fundamental challenges arise from the strongly coupled nature of the impacts of a pandemic (i.e. not only on health, but also on the entire socio-economic infrastructure) and their long-term evolution with recovery likely to take many years or, potentially, decades. Here, we outline experience gained in risk assessment within the nuclear industry, which has experience facing similar challenges (assessing long-term impacts in a strongly coupled technical system subject to socio-economic constraints), and assess options for knowledge transfer that may help manage future pandemics and other high-impact threats.