Research area
14 reports in the series.
A resilience-capacity scorecard for 166 countries finds the buffers concentrated where they are least needed, weaknesses travelling together in 50 countries of 1.7 billion people, and the 2020–23 shocks felt less in the first blow than in an unequal recovery.
Existing resilience, risk-reduction and adaptation work is organised hazard by hazard, while the risk arrives through the connections. A proposed framework defines the capacity to respond to the interactions themselves, and a six-question test to screen any action against it.
Flagship report. The mathematics of diffusion — first written down for salt dissolving in water — as a disciplined way to see technology spread, productivity convergence and the accumulation of capability whole.
Decisions this decade, consequences to 2100. A purpose-built scenario model compares four futures and finds that acting early and together could avert roughly 368 million deaths — while delay or siloed action forfeits more than a third of that. Report 01 of the Polycrisis Resilience series.
Nodes, channels, amplifiers and circuit-breakers, with the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis as a live case.
Why the central development problem is no longer invention but delivery.
The case for accelerating development is usually moral and economic. This report adds a third argument — timing: several slow stresses are set to peak together between 2040 and 2060, and development cuts vulnerability far faster than mitigation cuts hazard.
Resilience finance is scarce and barely correlated with vulnerability. Scoring 122 economies on risk intensity, risk mass and deliverability to show where each dollar would do the most.
Why the investments that lift people up are the same investments that stop shocks from spreading.
Climate, pollution and instability act on the same people at the same time. A five-layer Capacity Stack for anticipating, absorbing and adapting to all three at once — and why capacity built early is cheaper than capacity improvised.
Why risks now travel together, how shocks cascade through coupled systems, and what governments, firms and communities can do to keep functioning — the evidence, a framework and a roadmap.
How shrinking the number of people in harm’s way, loosening the links between failing systems, and enlarging financial and institutional buffers can reduce the human cost of coupled global crises.
Systemic vulnerability is built, not given. Two levers — adaptation and clean infrastructure — can lower it, but only if they are financed and sequenced before the concrete is poured.
Coupled shocks defeat siloed responses. Four mutually reinforcing pillars — climate resilience, development finance, the energy transition, and institutional capacity — form a single strategy rather than a menu.