Case Studies and Guiding Principles in Planning for Disaster

Given the track record in recent years of risk management in preparing for and addressing emerging big risks, it is clear that this is a weaker part of firms’ risk management capabilities. How can we better plan for future risk events? In boardrooms and discussions with their chief risk officers, leaders of firms desperately want to know: What should we be worrying about, what is the next thing that is going to blow us up? A look at major disasters in history: one wrought by God (the biblical flood) and two by man (Hitler's 1940 invasion of France and the 1967 Six‐Day War in Gaza) can provide us with some guiding principles on planning for such events.