The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Risk Academy, a Nexortium programmeSystems and Nexus StudiesDepartment of Systemic Risk and Complexity
Compound events, cascading failure, shock propagation and tipping points
Systemic, compound and cascading risk covers risk that arises from the interdependence of systems: compound events in which hazards combine, cascading failures across infrastructure, economies and societies, shock propagation through networks, tipping points, and the governance and assessment of systemic risk at national and global level.
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Twin figures for the Tonle Sap and the Lower Mekong at Phnom Penh, counted from its layers at their stated dates.
For Systemic, compound and cascading risk: the faculty's twin of Tonle Sap on the planet map, the globe and in 3D. Pick a generator, switch layers, run the instruments; every layer prints its provider and date.
Drag to move, right drag or Shift with a drag to turn and tilt, Ctrl with the wheel to zoom. Keyboard: arrows move, Shift with arrows turn and tilt, + and - zoom, 0 resets, V steps through the views, Escape clears.
Flat plan of the same data: the lake and rivers, the dams, the plants by capacity, the cropland and tree cover cells and the numbers below. The 3D twin opens on devices with WebGL once its data and library have been checked; discharge, vegetation, surface water and the annual land cover load in the twin on request, each with its data date.
The map loads from this site as it nears the view (MapLibre 6.9.1, checked by hash).
The discipline teaches interdependency mapping with the coupling typology of Rinaldi, Peerenboom and Kelly, shock propagation in the input-output form of Leontief with the spectral radius as the stability reading, compound event construction after Zscheischler and colleagues, cascade metrics of reach, depth, speed and amplification, and systemic risk governance, under ISO 31000 and IEC 31010. The faculty's cascade instrument is its own: perturb the basin's water, energy, food or ecosystems and trace the other three through a coupling matrix you can edit, with the line that the couplings are a teaching loop's sensitivities and not measurements. A graduate can build a dependency graph with sourced edges, propagate a compound shock through it and report reach and amplification with the model's limits stated.
This area covers risk that arises from the interdependence of systems: compound events in which hazards combine, cascading failures across infrastructure, economies and societies, shock propagation through networks, tipping points, and the governance and assessment of systemic risk at national and global level. It is taught in the department of Systemic Risk and Complexity, Faculty of Systems and Nexus Studies, through 2 courses with it as primary discipline and 1 more that also teach it.
8 subtopics, taught across its courses and labs.
Recent developments in systemic, compound and cascading risk, each with its source; sources checked on 16 October 2026. Summaries are short readings of the source; follow the link for the full account.
News and research as they are published, per discipline, with the faculty's other tools.
The newest research, preprints, news and humanitarian reports for Systemic, compound and cascading risk, each with its source and date, load here. Open the research and news hub
From the Academy's risk taxonomy: the discipline's own entries and those of its primary courses, with how many courses teach each.
Courses with this as their primary discipline. Open courses link to the catalogue.
Courses with this primary discipline1 open, 1 in preparation
These courses count in their own primary discipline and also teach this one; they do not count towards its achievement as primary courses.
Also taught here1 courses that count in another discipline
Nexus Foundry system pages describe what each system and its rooms are designed to do; they are not a service on offer, and studying here gives no access to them.
| Lab | What you do in it | Courses using it |
|---|---|---|
| Network lab | Build dependency graphs, find critical nodes, trace cascades | 3 |
| Map lab | Read hazard, exposure and boundaries on real maps | 1 |
The catalogue lists each course with its outcomes, labs, hours and level.