Traditional disaster risk prevention has a concept of risk factors. These factors are not risks in and of themselves, but they increase either the probability or the magnitude of a risk. For instance, inadequate governance structures do not cause a specific disaster, but if a disaster strikes it may impede an effective response, thus increasing the damage.

Rather than considering individual scenarios of how s-risks could occur, which tends to be highly speculative, this post will instead look at risk factors – i.e. factors that would make s-risks more likely or more severe.