Forward
As described in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2014 report, as people and things located throughout the world are increasingly hyperconnected, the impacts of catastrophic events know no geographical, jurisdictional or industrial boundaries. Further, the interdependencies inherent in shared and global infrastructure can compound existing systemic risks, making consequences non-linear and hard to predict. As a result, no single private-sector entity possesses all of the necessary authority, capability and capacity required to address complex risks, and as a global community, we cannot rely on government action alone to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate the effects of adverse events.
Therefore, to limit the effects of catastrophic events and ensure economic, cultural, societal and infrastructural continuity, we must work together in multistakeholder partnerships – with stakeholders from government, the private sector and civil society – to increase our collective ability to be resilient to hazards and risks. For this purpose, resilience is defined as “the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions”.1 The World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Risk & Resilience is developing resilience use cases to demonstrate how resilience can be built and strengthened through public-private partnerships, and to learn from specific events and/or risks that affect the global community.