The Blueprint #16
This week we talk about systemic risks identified by insurer Swiss Re; rising van pollution, patients developing adaptation strategies; & a new study behavioural change factors.
What’s The Blueprint About?
The Blueprint is a newsletter exploring service design topics in light of the planetary crisis and vice-versa, under 10 minutes.
If you have any questions, comments or recommendation, you can contact me at hello@sidneydebaque.com. In the meantime, bonne lecture!
SONAR 2024: Systemic risks to our society and services
Insurance company Swiss Re has published SONAR 2024, its annual report looking at emerging risks insurers need to consider for the not so distant future. Out of the 16 risks identified in the report, ranging from public investments in healthcare to AI related risks, 3 are directly relevant to this newsletter. I thought it was an interesting report to cover here as it links directly planetary crisis and business operations:
Cascading effects of socio-natural catastrophes
Beyond direct impact of socio-natural catastrophes are cascading effects. These effects are the indirect impact of an event, such as a forest fire ending up in contaminating water, as water is contaminated people and local fauna fall ill, water shortages need to be managed, potentially jeopardizing local agriculture, services need to be put in place to bring water to local areas, etc.
A weakened supply chain due to reduced strategy investments
Prioritising costs reductions, companies are walking away from strategic investment aiming to improve supply chain robustness. The risk of disaster is increased as supply chain are less able to cope with shocks, may these be climatic, political, or technological. With more optimised supply chain, the transmission of a shock down the line is therefore greater, fostering cascading effects.
Managing energy’s transition waste
Rated as a low impact, this risk involves the end of life management of the infrastructure supporting the electrification of the society, such as solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. When badly managed, just like any other waste, it can create risks for the environment through pollution or people due to hazardous substances.
(Also) Tensions fuelled by the climate crisis
Impacting food security, making areas of the world unliveable, or even generating water shortages, risks arising from the climate crisis are manifold. As a result, it increases the risk of tensions, both at the national and international level, from riots to military conflicts.
(Also²) The dependency on Big Tech
The monopoly of digital infrastructures by the Big 5 tech companies (Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple and Microsoft) is creating dependencies and risks to the society. Having worked on digital transformation projects, I directly see the prevalence of Big Tech in such project, whether they’re providing some or all of the capabilities to both private and public services. This dependence is a risk at the society and economical level. It gives too much power to a few companies, which can easily dictate market rules, standards, and therefore service design.
From a planetary crisis & service design point of view:
While we often talk about planetary risks on needs such as food and health, on places such cities and land, or even on industries such as agriculture or finance, we rarely talk about their impact at the service level.
Services are the thread of our society and economy: They help to power systems, such as supply chain or healthcare, but they also have materiality of their own, being operated by people, requiring capabilities such as vehicles, or requiring resources to be powered.
Such risks need to be accounted for when designing services, considering the impact of rising temperature on people powering a service for instance, designing contingency plans to prevent cascading effects in case of service disruption; or ensuring we maintain structural investments to guarantee robustness, to name a few.
Similarly, services can help to address such risks at a macro-scale, by fostering robustness and resilience through society. Designing the right services help to buffer cascading effects, support waste management, themselves being strategic investments.
The Sonar 2024 report is well worth a read, linking systemic risks to business operations and society making the case for adaptation strategy, either within a service itself or through services to foster robustness & resilience.
Last year I published a post on medium that goes slightly more in details on service design strategies to adapt to the planetary crisis. If you’re interested, it’s accessible here.
Other noteworthy news:
[Deliveries] Carbon emissions arising from vans has increased by almost two third compared to 1990’s level, while emissions from private cars and taxis have fallen by a fifth on the same period. The boom of e-commerce is to be held responsible, with an additional 1,000,000 vans in circulation compared to 2014. I’ve written on the impact of deliveries a couple years back, it’s accessible on Medium.
→ Read on Business Green
[Pollution] Air pollution has been found to have been the cause to 135 million premature deaths between 1980 and 2020. Eastern Europe and China are the place the most affected by air pollution related deaths.
→ Read more on The Independant
[Cascading Effects] Talking about cascading effects, the recent heatwave in India illustrates the principle and the ramifying consequences of socio-natural disasters. The heatwave and chain reactions are overloading hospitals, energy system, leading heatstroke and deaths, preventing people to work and shutting down schools.
→ Read on NBC News
[Health Service Disruption] A short article with Amercian Cancer Society’s Scientific Director Leticia Nogueira about chemotherapy disruptions during extreme weather events. Patients have to prepare for potential service disruption in case doctors can’t visit them. Currently most of the burden is onto patients, left to find strategies to access critical treatments.
→ Read more on Yale Climate Connections
[Designing for change] A recent research paper identifies habits & access as key behavioural drivers. The former being about individual drivers, the former about environmental drivers. The authors call to reconsider tactics used as part of change strategies. They advise to help people develop habits by incentivising behaviours for instance, and create the environment and infrastructure to support these new behaviours.
→ Access PDF
I’m a freelance service designer who helps public and private organisations intervene to mitigate the impact of the planetary crisis on humans and vice-versa.
You can contact me about for questions, comments or consulting at hello@sidneydebaque.com