Office of Strategic Risk Assessment

Overview

The Office of Strategic Risk Assessment (OSRA) studies threats to civilization that arise not from any single hazard but from the interaction of many. Its premise, inherited from the Interagency Task Force on Civilizational Continuity, is that modern societies depend on a small number of tightly coupled systems — energy, food, water, finance, supply chains, communications, computation, public health and governance — and that the most serious risks lie in the couplings between them.

The Office owns the Integrated Civilizational Systems Model (ICSM), which represents 11 of these systems as coupled modules, and leads the Integrated Systems Modeling Program that develops and operates it. ICSM version 4.0 was baselined in April 2026 and described in DSC-TR-2026-003. The Office’s analysis of coupling pathways was published in August as DSC-TR-2026-010.

OSRA issues the Civilizational Systems Outlook series. The first edition, DSC-TR-2026-014, released on 15 October 2026 using ICSM version 4.2, reported that in 71 percent of ensemble runs (90 percent interval 58–82 percent) the Composite Systemic Stress Index enters the systemic breakdown regime before 1 January 2035. The Office assesses this as a serious finding and also as an uncertain one; its summary of what the result does and does not mean is available on the risk assessment page.

The Office’s working culture is built around the possibility that its models are wrong. Every production result must be reproduced independently within the Office before release; model code, inputs and run records are open to the independent Model Review Panel; and dissenting opinions — including the two the Panel recorded on calibration of the Governance module in version 4.2 — are published alongside the findings they concern rather than resolved privately.

Responsibilities

• Own, develop and maintain the Integrated Civilizational Systems Model.
• Lead the Integrated Systems Modeling Program and run ICSM production ensembles on ALPHA-1.
• Issue the Civilizational Systems Outlook series and the Composite Systemic Stress Index nowcast.
• Assess interdependencies among critical global systems and identify high-consequence coupling pathways.
• Support the Model Review Panel with full access to code, data and run records, and publish its findings.
• Synthesize evidence from other divisions, including FSEP evaluation results and OLSR scenario work, into Departmental risk assessments.
• Brief the Secretary on systemic risk and on changes in the CSSI.

Organization

Systems Modeling Branch

Develops and maintains the ICSM code base and its 11 modules, manages model versions, and runs production ensembles at Facility Alpha.

Risk Synthesis Branch

Interprets model results alongside evidence from outside the model, prepares the Outlook series and other assessments, and drafts the plain-language accounts of what findings mean.

Data and Indicators Branch

Assembles historical calibration data, maintains the Composite Systemic Stress Index and its sub-indices, and produces the annual nowcast.

Model Integrity and Review Office

Independently reproduces every production result before release, maintains provenance records, and serves as the Office’s point of coordination with the Model Review Panel.