Project Management Assignment: Controlling Risks associated to Melbourne Extreme Weather Events

Question

Task
You are a consultant and have been commissioned to provide an analysis of any one of top ten risks listed on Table 2 below.

This case study will focus at three dimensions on which Risk is to be studied.

1. The Interplay Between Geopolitics and Economics
2. Rapid Unplanned Urbanisation in Developing Countries
3. Emerging Technologies

Below are excerpts as reported in Global Risk 2015 describing the three dimensions studied

1. The Interplay Between Geopolitics and Economics:
   “With economies tied together on an unprecedented scale by financial and trade flows, many analysts are concerned about the resurgence of the trend towards the interplay between geopolitics and economics. While national governments in the past also made use of economic tools to increase their relative power, today’s strong economic ties arguably make this interplay more complex and therefore more difficult to navigate. This resurgence could have profound implications for the effectiveness of global governance mechanisms in other areas, from combating climate change to reaching an international solution for Internet governance.”
2. Rapid Unplanned Urbanisation in Developing Countries:
   “Even as nation states step up their efforts to maintain or expand power, urbanization is slowly but surely rebalancing the locus of power from national to city governments. The data gathered for this report suggest that urbanization is a critical driver of profound social instability, failure of critical infrastructure, water crises, and the spread of infectious diseases. This will only be further exacerbated by an unprecedented transition from rural to urban areas: by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population – an estimated 6.3 billion people – will live in cities, with 80% in less developed regions. Rapid and unplanned urbanization in these regions has the potential to drive many risks. How effectively the world addresses global risks, ranging from climate change to pandemics, will increasingly be determined by how well cities are governed. The concentration of a large number of people, assets, critical infrastructure and economic activities means that the risks materializing at the city level have the potential to disrupt society.”
3. Emerging Technologies:
   “From artificial intelligence to synthetic biology, the need for governance on a global scale comes into focus when considering emerging technologies, given the many uncertainties about how emerging technologies evolve and their far-reaching economic, societal and environmental implications. The data also point to strong interconnections with man-made and natural environmental catastrophes. The coming years are likely to see rapid advances in such fields as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology – and while many of their impacts are likely to be beneficial, negative effects will spread quickly in today’s hyperconnected world. Some of those negative effects may be difficult to anticipate and safeguard against.”

Answer

Executive Summary
The change in the climate is ranked three in the list of the top 10 global risks and has been affecting the economics globally. Extreme weather events include droughts, hurricane, cyclone, unwanted weather and many more. It has been an alarming situation for the world to consider it as the most concerning risk that has been spread all over the globe. This reports aims at delivering the report in relation to this global risk and propose the strategies those could minimize the impact of these risks at the extent level. Adopting sustainable environment by the industries can be the recommended strategy that can result in the elimination of maximum threats to the minimum level and a better future can be estimated through this adoption.

Introduction
Extreme weather condition can be defined as the unexpected behavior of the weather that is causing damage to the human lives and economy. Some of the examples of recent extreme weather events include September 1900; 15.7-foot hurricane occurred that affected 37,000 population and a financial loss of $ 700 million. October 1923, Western Australia felt 1000 F temperature for 160 consecutive days. In 2002, Flying foxes came to extension level because of the 42.90 C temperature, august 2005 Katrina Hurricane occurred that caused a loss of $ 81 billion, in July 2010, 10,000 individuals died because of the unexpected and drastic increase in the temperature (Evans 2018, accessed online). In April 2011, 100 individual tornedos were occurred at the same instance, and many more.

The aim of this report is to emphasize on the risks related to the extreme weather events that is capable of affecting the global economy, considering the human lives loss and financial loss. The purpose is to propose a strategy that can be applied for the elimination and mitigation of the identified risks at the extent level. This risk management is helpful in identifying the highly impacting risks and limiting the influence of these risks to the extent level.

Establishing the context (Internal and External)
The scope of the proposed risk management strategy is to emphasize on the following contexts by considering the internal and external environment of the economy –

Governance: whenever an unwanted weather event occurs it affect the whole governance model of the government or any other organization completely loss its governance level (Khan et al. 2015).

Better life living of the community: Present a sophisticated plan that can enhance the life living of the individuals and assuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the risk management strategies.

Limit the loss of lives: Many life losses have been already faced by the world, this report will be helpful in restricting the impacting elements and thus, resulting in better outcomes.

Financial: The introduction part states how costly can be these unwanted events for the economy other than human losses (Lesk, Pedram and Rowhani 2016).

Regulatory: It affects the entire financial condition of the country and hence, regulatory become a very tough situation for the organization. Furthermore, it is also identified that regulatory is also an integral part of the business organization to maintain their ethics and employability.

Technology: Technology can be considered as the biggest cause of this occurrence however; it cannot be limited or restricted. Thus, attempt will be driven to utilize technology to mitigate these risks (Hopkin 2017).

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment Matrix

Risk Treatment Schedule and Plan

Risk Action Plan

Conclusion
Based on the above report it can be concluded that the extreme weather event is a crucial factor considering the global risks and proper concern is needed for the elimination of these threats. The above report explained the most emphasizing risks and impacts of the extreme weather event condition. This report presents a risk prioritization and severity matrix that could be considered while limiting these threats and risks and their impacts.

References
Bertone, E., Sahin, O., Richards, R. and Roiko, A., 2016. Extreme events, water quality and health: A participatory Bayesian risk assessment tool for managers of reservoirs. Journal of Cleaner Production, 135, pp.657-667.

Birkmann, J. and Mechler, R., 2015. Advancing climate adaptation and risk management. New insights, concepts and approaches: what have we learned from the SREX and the AR5 processes?.

Haddow, G., Bullock, J. and Coppola, D.P., 2017. Introduction to emergency management. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hopkin, P., 2017. Fundamentals of risk management: understanding, evaluating and implementing effective risk management. Kogan Page Publishers. http://www.earthtimes.org/encyclopaedia/environmental-issues/extreme-weather/, Extreme Weather, Evans M., Accessed on 14.05.may

Huang, J., Wang, Y. and Wang, J., 2015. Farmers' adaptation to extreme weather events through farm management and its impacts on the mean and risk of rice yield in China. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 97(2), pp.602-617.

Khan, S.J., Deere, D., Leusch, F.D., Humpage, A., Jenkins, M. and Cunliffe, D., 2015. Extreme weather events: Should drinking water quality management systems adapt to changing risk profiles?. Water research, 85, pp.124-136.

Lesk, C., Rowhani, P. and Ramankutty, N., 2016. Influence of extreme weather disasters on global crop production. Nature, 529(7584), p.84.

Linnerooth-Bayer, J. and Hochrainer-Stigler, S., 2015. Financial instruments for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation. Climatic Change, 133(1), pp.85-100.

McNeil, A.J., Frey, R. and Embrechts, P., 2015. Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press.

Reason, J., 2016. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge.