Constructing a cross-field scenario system to aware systemic risk: national security as an example

Systemic risks are creating new, unsolved challenges for risk governance to bring about potential harm with broad, cross-department or transnational impact in the absence of risk supervision. Taking national security as an example, this paper presents a cross-field scenario system to aware systematic risks. In the coupling context of epidemic prevention and control, multi-field scenarios are considered to recognize international relations (IR), and their interactions are established systematically. Drawing from relevant studies, 15 factors are summarized from 6 fields. A six-level hierarchical structure of factors is constructed using the interpretive structural modeling. Next, the Matrix of Cross Impact Multiplications Applied to Classification is utilized to further understand the dependency power of each factor. The results show that a complicated cross-field interaction exists in these factors. Political System and Globalization are root factors of IR. Our findings suggest that: (a) strengthening the supervision on three direct factors, including Exchange Rate, Military Load and International Communication Capacity, can help to recognize the change of IR timely and improve forewarning of national security; (b) appropriate interventions in strong driving factors like Combined Polity Score, Participation of International Organizations, Globalization Index, Net Import of Energy, and Global Innovation Index can adjust the bilateral relations for the better. This study will not only provide theoretical support for the complex IR analysis, but also provide decision-making support for systemic risk response.