Systemic and compound events

A break in the flow of goods or materials between producers and users that stops production or leaves shortages.

Also: supply chain breakdown, shortage

Closure of a narrow route on which much trade depends, such as a strait, canal, pass or bridge.

Also: strait closure, canal blockage

Loss of a major port or airport hub, from hazard, strike, attack or congestion, that stalls trade.

Also: airport closure, port strike

Sudden loss of oil, gas, coal or electricity supply that raises prices and cuts activity.

Also: fuel shortage, gas supply cut

Failure of harvest, processing, storage or distribution that leaves food unavailable or unaffordable in a market area.

Also: food shortage

Export bans, sanctions or embargoes that cut access to goods, energy or inputs.

Also: export ban, sanctions

Failure of the only or dominant supplier of a critical good or service, such as a key part, with no ready substitute.

Also: critical component shortage

Breakdown of refrigerated storage and transport that spoils vaccines, medicines and food.

Also: refrigeration failure

Shortage of medicines, oxygen, blood or equipment that leaves health services unable to treat.

Also: oxygen shortage, medicine shortage

Loss of advanced or mature chip output, from fab damage, contamination, water or power loss, conflict or export controls, halting vehicles, devices and infrastructure equipment.

Also: chip shortage, fab outage

Long lead times for transformers, cables, switchgear and turbines that delay repairs after disasters and slow new connections.

Also: transformer backlog, cable supply shortage

Shortage of specialist gases used in chip-making, medical imaging, food processing and water treatment, caused by concentrated production or plant outages.

Also: helium shortage, carbon dioxide shortage, neon shortage

Reliance on few suppliers for uranium conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication, so sanctions or outages threaten reactor operation.

Also: enrichment dependency, fuel fabrication bottleneck

A shortage of ships, containers, trucks or crews that drives freight costs up and delays deliveries worldwide.

Also: container shortage, shipping capacity squeeze

Growing swings in orders and stocks moving up a supply chain, as each stage overreacts, producing alternating gluts and shortages.

Also: bullwhip effect, order amplification

Sudden loss or restriction of minerals concentrated in few countries, such as lithium, cobalt, rare earths or gallium, stalling batteries, electronics, defence and grids.

Also: rare earth shortage, battery metal shortage

Sharp loss or price spike in nitrogen, phosphate or potash fertiliser, from gas prices, sanctions or export bans, cutting yields in the following seasons.

Also: fertilizer shortage

A failure in one infrastructure system that spreads through dependency links to power, water, transport, communications and health.

Also: critical infrastructure failure, cascading failure

Loss of electricity that stops, in turn, pumps, signalling, telecom masts, refrigeration and hospital support.

Also: blackout knock-on

A shock to one of water, energy or food supply that propagates to the others through shared inputs, such as power for pumping and water for cooling.

Also: nexus shock

Spread of a financial shock between institutions, markets and countries through shared exposures and loss of confidence.

Also: market contagion

Demand for care exceeding capacity, from a surge of cases or injuries or from loss of staff and supplies, so that avoidable deaths rise.

Also: hospital surge, care capacity exceeded

Simultaneous demands that exceed the capacity of rescue, relief and coordination, delaying aid.

Also: responder saturation

Loss of a digital service, such as payments, cloud, identity or navigation, that stops the physical services built on it, from fuel pumps and pharmacies to logistics and power control.

Also: IT outage knock-on, digital service cascade

A blocked restart in which power, telecoms, fuel and water each need another to recover first, prolonging a widespread outage.

Also: circular dependency, restoration interdependency

A grid disturbance in one country that spreads across interconnections and splits or blacks out a multinational power system.

Also: interconnected grid disturbance, synchronous area split

A loop in which physical damage or risk prompts insurers, lenders and investors to withdraw, which blocks repair and adaptation and raises future physical losses.

Also: insurance retreat spiral, climate asset repricing loop

Flooding made worse by two or more drivers acting together, such as storm surge with heavy rain or high river flow.

Also: surge and rain flooding, coincident flooding

A hot spell on dry soils in which heat and water deficit reinforce each other, cutting crops and raising fire and power-demand risk.

Also: hot-dry extreme

Harvest failure in several major producing regions in the same season, tightening global food supply.

Also: multiple breadbasket failure

Extreme cold that raises heating demand while freezing or limiting fuel and generation, risking blackouts.

Also: winter blackout risk

Extreme heat that raises cooling demand while lowering line and plant capacity and river-cooling margins.

Also: summer peak stress

A technological accident, such as a toxic release, fire or explosion, triggered when a natural hazard damages a plant, pipeline or store.

Also: natural-hazard-triggered technological accident

Back-to-back hazards in the same place before recovery, so that damage and vulnerability accumulate.

Also: back-to-back disasters

A natural or technological disaster striking during an outbreak, which blocks distancing, care and supply and may seed new spread.

Also: disaster in a pandemic

Armed conflict combined with drought, flood or other climate stress in the same place, which multiplies food and displacement crises.

Also: climate-conflict nexus

Dependence of a service, region or industry on one asset, site, route or provider whose loss stops the whole, with no tested alternative.

Also: critical node, sole route

Concentration of critical digital, financial or logistic services in very few providers, so that one provider's failure becomes a failure of whole sectors.

Also: cloud concentration, hyperscale dependency, Critical digital-provider concentration, vendor lock-in, compute concentration

Failure of supposedly independent backups or systems together because they share a design, supplier, software, location or hazard exposure.

Also: shared-cause failure, correlated failure, single point of failure

Widespread use of the same software, device or design across many systems, so that one flaw or fault can hit all of them at once.

Also: software monoculture, uniform platform dependence, Software monoculture failure, faulty mass update, common-mode software fault

Operating with minimal stocks and spare capacity for efficiency, which leaves supply chains and services with no buffer when a flow is interrupted.

Also: just-in-time fragility, low buffer stocks

Concentration of irreplaceable production or infrastructure in one hazard-exposed place, so that a single earthquake, flood, storm or conflict removes a global supply.

Also: co-located facilities, regional concentration of plants

A dependency between systems or suppliers that operators do not know about until it fails, defeating plans built on independence.

Also: hidden dependency, unknown fourth-party risk

Systems linked so closely and quickly, often by automation, that a fault propagates faster than people can understand or stop it.

Also: tight coupling, automated chain reaction

Shocks that strike many countries or systems at the same time through shared climate drivers, markets or technologies, overwhelming mutual aid and substitution.

Also: synchronous failure, simultaneous shocks

Several global crises, such as conflict, climate, debt, disease and energy, interacting so that each worsens the others and the joint harm exceeds their sum.

Also: entangled crises, interacting global crises

Gradual loss of the spare money, stocks, staff and institutional capacity that let societies recover, so each new shock does lasting damage.

Also: shrinking fiscal space, exhausted reserves