British National Risk Register 2023

I went to see Oppenheimer during the week, which was excellent. I guess it is watchable on several different levels depending on your perspective - I was stunned by the acting and production but mostly struck by the fragility of life in the post-nuclear age. Clearly, humans for the most part are getting healthier and living longer and our capacity to manage risks has accumulated over time. But as was hanging over the Oppenheimer film, it is not difficult to foresee scenarios where a closed group of people cause a globally catastrophic incident at some point in our lifetime. With that in mind, it is good to see the UK government increasing the details provided in the national risk register. The 2023 document outlines the key risks facing the UK. Details below and the document and various details are here. 

The 2023 National Risk Register is the external version of the National Security Risk Assessment, which is the government’s assessment of the most serious risks facing the UK. It provides the government’s updated assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a broad range of risks that may directly affect the UK and its interests. This version of the National Risk Register is more transparent than ever before. It  reflects the principles of the UK Government Resilience Framework to communicate risk information in a more open and accessible way, to ensure shared understanding of and greater preparedness for risks. It’s aimed at risk and resilience practitioners, including businesses and voluntary and community sector organisations. You can read the National Risk Register as a document or explore the information on the digital platform.

For the last few summers, I have ran a reading group on behavioural and psychological aspects of key risks. Many of the papers and topics we discussed are available on this link and there were many student projects and presentations. This was obviously partly inspired by the case of covid and my working as part of the national public health emergency response in Ireland. Linked here is a co-authored paper with Michael Daly on incorporating well-being research into pandemic policy that gives an indication of my own orientation. In our reading groups in LSE and through various classes, I ask students to engage with various risks on the UK and other national and international risk registers. We have conducted a number of policy simulations described here that include examining psychological and behavioural aspects of major emerging risks. I have found these to be some of the most interesting sessions I have been involved with in my career and we are continuing to work on developing these aspects as a core part of our programmes here.