A guide for facilitators
The JRC ‘Polycrisis Exploration Workshop’ facilitates strategic conversations about current and future risks, disasters, and polycrises. It is based on the foresight study ‘Risks on the Horizon. This guidance document provides detailed instructions on how to run a workshop, and how to use the insights in policy making.
Risk is ever present. Risk events, i.e. disasters and crises, are growing more extreme and are increasingly interconnected. The cascading and compounding impacts can be the most severe. Many risks have the potential to develop into ‘global shocks’, at the same time as critical choices are being made (regarding geopolitical, environmental, and disruptive technologies for example). Navigating and assessing risks when making strategic policy decisions, and planning for a resilient long-term future, is becoming more difficult.
This tool can be used to:
1. Enhance risk awareness by exploring the broad spectrum of risks, and build awareness of other actors’ perspectives.
2. Map potential future polycrises and explore interconnected and cascading impacts. Investigate how they might affect your policy area.
3. Identify policy interventions to mitigate risks and disasters, and to support policy goals. Think about where risk comes from, and which drivers could make a disaster more extreme in the longer-term future. Identify interventions for today, and the people who need to be involved in planning.
Collective intelligence exercises such as this can bring new knowledge and broader perspectives into policy making, sparking new ideas, and helping to co-create impactful interdisciplinary solutions. They complement traditional risk assessment - moving from understanding complex risk to managing it. The workshop aims to be accessible, and can be a starting point for deeper analysis, enhancing EU preparedness.
WHYTE Jacqueline;
TRAINAUSKIENE Sigita;
MUENCH Stefan;
MALESINSKA Marta;
HAUER Greta;
ASIKAINEN Tommi;
BARABANOVA Yulia;
2026-08-25
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC141120
978-92-68-25691-6 (online),
978-92-68-42634-0 (print),
OP KJ-01-25-188-EN-N (online),
OP KJ-01-25-188-EN-C (print),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC141120,
10.2760/0919432 (online),
10.2760/6999604 (print),
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