UR22 London
29 November 2022

The Design Museum, London, UK, and online

Hosted by Lloyd’s Register Foundation in partnership with the Red Cross Climate Centre and Anticipation Hub, in association with the World Bank, the London Satellite Hub of the Understanding Risk Global Forum (UR22) took place at the Design Museum on 29 November 2022.

This event provids an opportunity for risk practitioners from across the UK, Europe and beyond to come together, in person and online, to discuss and hear from leading experts on themes including understanding and managing compound risks and best practice in risk communication. The event also showcased new findings from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll on issues from disaster resilience to risks associated with the use of personal data and AI.

This event is in the interest of anyone with a role or interest in understanding and managing risks to safety, including from government, academia, international institutions, NGOs and the private sector. It is a satellite event of the Understanding Risk Global Forum that took place in Florianopolis, Brazil from 28 November to 2 December 2022.

Session recordings


Opening Keynote

Reflecting on over three decades of personal experience in international humanitarian work, Richard Blewitt, Executive Director of International at the British Red Cross, will open the UR22 London Satellite Hub by providing a humanitarian perspective on the challenges of managing compound risks around the world – illustrated by recent examples of how these risks manifest in humanitarian needs in places such as Somaliland and the Sahel, where people are facing a perfect storm of compounding risks including conflict, drought, flooding, food insecurity and Covid-19.

Speakers:
Richard Blewitt
Executive Director of International / British Red Cross


Risk Know-How in Communities around the World

Every day, thousands of people all over the world are helping their communities to make sense of risk. These community risk practitioners have often been innovating in how to convey risk messages or question information. They are uniquely placed to know what their community knows and needs, but their expertise is often missing from global conversations about risk. Despite the different cultures and varied environments they each work in, they also often have similar needs. Diverse risk practitioners are making many of the same discoveries about what they and their communities need to decide the weight to give to information about risks.
In this discussion, community practitioners will discuss their experiences: what has been successful, what has been challenging, and what do they need in terms of support or tools to be able to ensure their community has risk know-how? The panel will also consider information providers and their role: do they have a responsibility to answer social questions as well as disseminate data?
The session will also consider how the Risk Know-How Framework can be used and applied to offer support and a guiding thread for developing more nuanced community conversations around risk.

Speakers:
Tracey Brown
Director / Sense About Science
Leonard Lee
Deputy Director / Lloyd’s Register Foundation Institute for the Public Understanding of Risk
Adam Parnell
Director (Maritime) / Confidential Human Factors Incident Reporting Programme (CHIRP)
Katherine Hill
Community Resilience Coordinator / British Red Cross


Perceptions of Risk and Harm from AI and Personal Data Use: Insights from the World Risk Poll

The use of personal data and AI technologies offers great potential across many areas of society to improve productivity, standards of living, decision-making and risk management. However, the use of such data and technologies also presents new risks and pitfalls of its own, such as the amplification of existing human biases in decision-making.
As part of the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll, global attitudes to risk and harm from the use of AI and personal data have been explored on an unprecedented scale: 125,000 interviews with people across 12 countries conducted by Gallup in 2021. To mark the launch of a new report on the findings, this session will discuss what must be done to manage this new area of risk, while still maximising the potential of data and AI to help manage old ones.

Speakers:
Sarah Cumbers
Director of Evidence and Insight / Lloyd’s Register Foundation
Georgina Godwin
Monocle 24
Aidan Peppin
Public Participation & Research Lead / Ada Lovelace Institute
Shahar Avin
Senior Research Associate / Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge


Do Look Up: What Can Circus Artists Teach us about Risk?

Aerial acrobats, professional jugglers, and other circus artists are remarkably talented at understanding, anticipating, and managing risk. Circus artists straddle fine lines in mitigating without eliminating risk and using the risk itself as a medium for community engagement and inspiration. Can we, as risk practitioners, learn from their talent and creativity?
This unconventional session will combine a taste of circus arts performance with (safe, and sensorially, cognitively, and emotionally stimulating) audience engagement and expert discussion to challenge how attendees perceive, understand, and address risk. Through a combination of formal presentations, designed interaction and serious fun, we will dive into the complex interactions between thrill, narrative, and analytical rigour. Importantly, we will co-create tangible and actionable ideas to support the Understanding Risk community through creative communication approaches that can be tailored to your specific needs and opportunities.

Speakers:
Pablo Suarez
Artist for Impact / Lloyd’s Register Foundation
Tilly Alcayna
Senior Technical Advisor / Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre
Daniel Clarke
Director / Centre for Disaster Protection
SJ Beard
Academic Programme Manager and Senior Research Associate / Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge


From a Ripple to a Surge: Understanding and Responding to Compound Risk

Framed by insights from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre as part of the Anticipation Hub, this session will explore how multiple risks can compound each other to cause greater harm, particularly to vulnerable populations that may suffer from discrimination and financial insecurity.
When two or more risks collide or occur rapidly one after another, the collective impact is often greater than the sum of its parts. When climate change and climate related disasters interact with trends such as skewed development, conflict and violence, poor natural resource management, rapid rates of urbanisation, and gaping inequity, impacts are worse – particularly for the poorest and most vulnerable.
For example, some communities in East Africa have faced flooding, locusts, increased food insecurity, and armed conflict – in addition to the immediate health threats and socio-economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many European countries recently faced the worst heatwave in history, while dealing with fuel and energy shortages, rising inflation, continued migration, and security issues. It’s critical to understand the factors that contribute to compound risk and how they relate and impact each other. Panellists will discuss how we can use these insights to build equitable models of resilience that do not leave anyone behind.

Speakers:
Catalina Jaime
Lead of Climate and Conflict & PhD researcher / Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre & University of Twente, ITC
Ksenia Chmutina
Reader in Sustainable and Resilient Urbanism / School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering, Loughborough University
Nicola Ranger
Head of Sustainable Finance Research for Development & Senior Researcher / Oxford Sustainable Finance Group & Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
Liam Wotherspoon
Professor / Auckland University
Simphiwe Stewart
Technical Advisor on Climate and Conflict / Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre