How we plan is a statement of how we value the Future

 I recently spoke to the Waterloo Environment and Business Society (WEBS) gathering at the University of Waterloo. Before the event, the organizer challenged me to talk about how bad it can get. While the focus of the WEBS gathering was Climate Change and how our economic future would be affected, Climate Change is not the only trend that will influence our future. Technology has changed the way we communicate, live and work. Technology has caused a trend towards increased automation and concentration of value, both in terms of individual wealth in fewer hands and what is exposed to loss in an extreme event. Both Climate Change and technology are also changing the broader risk context across the board. Each risk is related in some way to others. When we do an all-hazards analysis, the realization of each hazard will change the likelihood and severity of others. Social changes borne out of the effects of Climate Change and technological change are being felt today and complicate the challenges of increasing urbanization, population growth and an aging population in the developed world. So even as we struggle with the big picture implications of Climate Change, the reality is that our future is less predictable and the consequences of getting it wrong are increasing. In amongst this uncertainty, there seems little appetite to change behaviour. It appears that many people just don't want to face this challenge.

I have discussed this frustration with industry and academic colleagues over the years and aside from a suspicion that "it's someone else's problem" there was the feeling that the whole concept of operational resilience is inaccessible to most and fewer still incorporate it in their strategy or planning. It has never really been clear to me why one wouldn't wish to use evidence-based objective analysis to inform risk exposure and associated trends in planning. Then again, it could be that a consideration of the future in decision making is secondary to the idea of commitment. Irrespective, I was encouraged to make the concepts more accessible for planners and students alike. The result is "After the Flood: Exploring Operational Resilience." However, it may just be that when we are faced with big concepts, we can be willfully ignorant. This echos Jared Diamond's observations in "Collapse." 

In 2010, Defence Research & Development Canada Centre for Operational Research & Analysis (CORA) published a pamphlet "Conceiving an Army for the 21st Century" in which the authors identified the global drivers that would most influence security. The top two drivers are energy and environmental sustainability. Depending on the driver direction we chose as a society, there are four alternative futures in the resulting 2x2 matrix to plan for: "Materialism Gone Mad, High Octane Green World (Best Case), Global Quagmire (Worst Case), and Recyclable Society." With cheap energy and a crisis reaction approach to the environment, we are squarely headed towards the Materialism Gone Mad future. The tools and understanding exist to recognize what must be done to safeguard our current and future capabilities and operations; we can actively manage our risk exposure. More often than not, we will save money as well as enhance our assurance in the process. As long as we chose to ignore the future and remain ignorant of our changing risk context, it will not matter whether we are able to plan resilient infrastructure systems, we will not have resilient cities.

My response to WEBS was simply that we have to decide whether the next generation is important enough for us to act.