In risk management, what do Black Jellyfish events refer to?

Black jellyfish events are events which have the potential of going postnormal by escalating rapidly, even instantaneously. We represent the postnormal potentiality of the unthought futures with Black Jellyfish. Black Jellyfish are ‘high impact’, but are ‘normal’ phenomena driven toward postnormalcy by positive feedback—or increasing growth leading toward systemic instability.

Why jellyfish? Due to climate change, increasing oceanic temperatures and acidity levels are creating perfect conditions for jellyfish blooms, which have forced shut downs at coastal power plants around the world, including nuclear reactors. Demonstrating how small things can have a big impact driven by positive feedback, jellyfish blooms provide us with the ideal representation of postnormalcy in the unthought futures.

Black Jellyfish are unknown knowns—things we think we know and understand but which turn out to be more complex and uncertain than we expect. In centering our concept on the escalation of jellyfish blooms, we aim to draw attention to scale: in unthought futures we need to examine small things and imagine their impact on larger scales and upon multiple overlapping systems over time.

Black swan events are rare and unpredictable and have severe consequences. Grey Rhino is highly probable, high-impact yet neglected threat, which occurs after a series of warnings and visible evidence. White Elephant refers to an investment whose upkeep cost is not in line with its usefulness or value.