Assessing Catastrophes-Dragon-Kings, Black, and Gray Swans-for Science-Policy.

ABSTRACT: The threat of catastrophic incidents-from nonroutine events to extreme ones, such as Dragon-Kings (DK), Black Swans (BS), and Gray Swans-induces precautionary initiatives that, before the fact, may encounter public resistance or after the fact recriminations. This study develops three aspects of these events: (1) generating mechanisms, (2) the statistical distributions of near and far-term consequences, and (3) the aggregation of expert opinions about assumptions, mechanisms, and consequences that informs science-policy. This study shows how causal analysis should account for the: (1) nonlinear catastrophic behaviors that generate predictions, (2) common and power-law distributions of the consequences, (3) self-organizing criticality and self-similarity, and (4) feedbacks and couplings bet

SUBMITTER: Ricci PF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6607139 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature