By Robert Gunther
Wharton's Risk Management and
Decision Processes Center examines
risks and uncertainties from chemical
disasters to earthquakes to terrorism.
On the morning of September 11, 2001,
Wharton Professor Howard Kunreuther
was bicycling along the Hudson River in
New York City. He had arrived just a
week before from Philadelphia to spend a
sabbatical at Columbia University's Earth
Institute. As he was riding, he was thinking
about a questionnaire on catastrophic
risks sitting back on his desk.
The topic of low-probability/high-consequence
events had occupied
Kunreuther's thinking for more than
two decades. As co-director of Wharton's
Risk Management and Decision Processes
Center, he had wrestled with the implications
of chemical disasters, earthquakes,
siting nuclear waste facilities, as well as
insurance, building codes, and other protective
measures. This topic was what
brought him to New York, but he had no
idea how that day would bring him right
into the heart of the issues of catastrophic
risk and protection.
An avid cycler who normally bikes
to his Wharton office, Kunreuther
was listening to his Walkman as he
rode along the river. He heard a
report that a small plane had hit the
World Trade Center. It took him a
little while to understand the full
extent of what happened, and while
the Columbia campus was far enough
away from Ground Zero that he experienced
little direct fallout, his life and
his work were changed completely.
Not only did that day bring catastrophic
risk front and center on the
agenda of businesses and policymakers,
Kunreuther's examination of that
tragedy fundamentally changed the
way he looked at these challenges. It
led him, along with a few colleagues,
to develop a new theory of "interdependent
security" that is now influencing
the national debate on how
best to protect society from terrorism
and other risks.
"September 11 changed my life,"
Kunreuther says. "In October, we
were supposed to go to China for a
month with Wharton, but I realized
there was no way I could go. To leave
New York City at that time didn't
make any sense, given that the ultimate
low-probability/high-consequence
event had occurred there."
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