Back in 2015, there were many consultancy and insurance reports which looked at global business risks and made predictions for the year ahead. Although these had value, none of them specifically utilized the experience and expertise that existed within the professional resilience community.

It was thus decided to launch an annual trends and predictions report which was based entirely on the knowledge and opinions of the professional resilience community. Styled as “for the profession, by the profession” this soon became essential reading for many in the business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management and emergency management fields. It also provided valuable information to overlapping professions such as enterprise risk management and cyber security. The combination of these specializations largely represents what has come to be known as “Resilience Management”.

In recent years the report has been divided into Trends (published in December) and Predictions (published in January). This blog today will give you the highlights of the findings of the Trends Report and a further blog next month will discuss the Predictions Report. Both reports are written by the DRI Future Vision Committee (FVC) under my chairmanship. The FVC consists of resilience thought leaders from North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, all of whom are experts in various aspects of resilience management. The reports are also supported by the views of DRI professionals in the annual survey which is also coordinated by the FVC.

The Trends Report is based on a survey of more than 500 professionals across all industries and sectors, the largest response in the report’s history. The report provides a full breakdown of all results in seven different world regions, all major business sectors and shows how regulation impacts priorities. It also looks at comparative results for different type and size of organization. The full report is available and can be downloaded from www.drii.org.  I am grateful to DRI International for allowing me to share some of the findings with readers of the Resilience Hub.

Trends Report and the Resilience Index

A key element of the Trends Report is the Resilience Index which uses a combination of probability and impact to rank the importance of issues to resilience professionals. The 2023 Resilience Index below shows the current top 10 business issues that are impacting the ability of organizations to meet their resilience goals. These were ranked by survey participants in the annual survey.

• Cyber Events – All disruptive cyber events including ransomware, service denial, information corruption and data theft.
• IT Failures and Disruptions – IT failure resulting in a system or application outage for an unacceptable duration.
• Financial Conditions – Overall state of the domestic and global economy based on a wide range of financial indicators.
• Natural Disasters – Hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, seismic events, wildfires.
• Human Resource Issues – Acquiring and retaining staff with current and future skills. The implications of AI on management and professional jobs.
• Power Shortages – Inadequate power to maintain normal operational functionality caused by failure of company or service provider infrastructure.
• Major Facility Incident – Fires, floods, explosions, chemical pollution, building collapse.
• Infectious Diseases – Pandemics, epidemics, respiratory illnesses, Ebola-type diseases, and bacterial diseases immune to antibiotics.
• Climate Change and Environmental Damage – Increased flood risk in coastal areas and drought in hot areas. Impact on future expansion, new construction methods and building protocols.
• Supply Chain Disruption – Disruption of key supplies, supplier failure, low inventories, single-source supplier, global shortage of commodities and raw materials.

Other issues that were considered important to resilience professionals but did not quite reach the top 10 included civil unrest, increased regulation, social media attacks, systemic institutional failure, and terrorism.

The survey also asked about strategic issues and how important they were likely to be in meeting resilience goals. The three topics of most concern were “uncontrolled/unregulated new technologies”, “lack of trust in organizations and institutions”  and “the lack of natural resources to sustain a modern economy”.

Key Findings

Since 2015, the concerns of resilience professionals have broadened. The traditional issues that Business Continuity professionals were involved with were IT Disruptions, Natural Disasters and Major Facility Incidents such as fire or flood. These are still important issues and continue to appear in the top 10 but they have been joined by other concerns that were simply considered part of everyday management.

The most obvious examples are the emergence of “financial conditions” and “human resources” as key resilience issues. Both of these are of overriding concern across all global regions. These were of only peripheral worry to resilience professionals until the 2019/20 survey but since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic they have been among the top 5 issues. A general concern about the overall stability of the world political and economic systems, rather than any single problem, seems to be at the main driver for this change.

Linked to the prevailing geo-political threats, concerns over natural resource shortages scored strongly in the 2023 survey – both in the operational section and as a longer-term strategic risk. Operationally, this manifested itself with power shortages being the 6th most worrying operational risk identified across the entire survey. From the strategic section, a lack of natural resources to sustain a modern economy was the third most widely identified concern.

Rapid reduction of fossil fuels is a daunting challenge as there is currently no alternative primary source of energy. The public is generally not enthusiastic about nuclear energy and the cost and technical complexities of scaling up wind, solar or hydro seem unsurmountable in the desired timescales. Water is also a diminishing resource and the various rare metals needed for batteries and other green technologies are unlikely to be reliably available in the desired quantities. New technical advances are urgently needed to meet carbon reduction targets while continuing to support a modern economic model.

Resource shortages and the political choice to withhold supply in world markets, might be the ultimate challenge to maintenance of the existing western economic and social system. It is possible that that this will change the power balance of the world in fundamental ways that we have not yet fully appreciated.

An age of rapidly advancing new widespread technologies must be the way forward. As always, imagination and innovation are needed. How growth and prosperity can be achieved without further diminishing the planet’s resources and causing more environmental damage is central to the debate. Given events in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, how this could be achieved without serious global conflict is highly questionable.

The report also looks at more day-to-day issues such as how the after-effects of the measures taken during the pandemic period are continuing to change working practices. The work from home model continues to be popular and is having a significant impact upon the commercial real estate market with rental rates falling significantly in most major US cities.

Further consideration of these and other issues will be discussed in the 9th Annual Predictions Report overview blog to be issued in February.  This year’s predictions highlight:

• Proposed climate change measures and potential backlash
• Evolving perceptions on artificial intelligence
• Power supply and demand crises
• Increasing technology regulation in the European Union
• Migration and other election issues
• And, much more

Download the free Trends and Predictions Reports from the DRI Library.

Both the Trends and Predictions Reports are published by DRI International – all usage of figures or quotes from the reports must be attributed accordingly.