The human civilisation has entered a phase in which high-impact, low-probability (HILP) risks can no longer be considered exceptional. They have become regular sources of technological and environmental disasters – including large-scale energy blackouts, accidents at critical infrastructure sites, global cyber incidents, and systemic failures in social infrastructures. These events increasingly exhibit sporadic, nonlinear, and multidomain dynamics that fall outside the scope of traditional models of analysis and response. Conventional risk management approaches – based on statistical predictability, probabilistic scenarios, and mechanisms of linear control – prove inadequate in the face of HILP phenomena, where neither accurate forecasting, nor localisation of impact, nor conventional representation of damage is feasible.
This project develops a new methodology for managing HILP risks, grounded in a synthesis of game theory, catastrophe theory, elements of chaos theory, and conceptual models describing the behaviour of complex evolving systems. The methodology is not oriented towards retrospective control, but rather towards the architectural design of systemic resilience, through the fractalisation of critical functions, the diversification of managerial and operational circuits, and the strategic enhancement of adaptive potential. The outcome of the project will be a practically applicable framework for systems sensitive to HILP risks, including energy, digital, cyber-infrastructural, and institutional sectors – in which security must be redefined as the capacity to endure the unpredictable.