Gathering Industry-Academia-Research Ideas for 'Unpredictable' Mega Disaster Response

Ministry of Science and ICT Launches 'X Event General Committee' on 27th
Scenario and Response Directions to be Presented by Year-End

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] As the scale of artificial and natural disasters and calamities facing humanity due to climate change, infectious diseases, and digitalization is increasingly beyond imagination, the government has begun preparing strategies to predict and proactively respond to such unexpected complex and large-scale crisis situations in advance.

On the 27th, the Ministry of Science and ICT launched the ‘X-Event General Committee,’ composed of experts from industry, academia, and research institutes, to discuss the ‘X-Event Response Strategy’ aimed at predicting and proactively responding to unexpected complex and large-scale crises like COVID-19 ahead of time.

The committee is chaired by Professor Hong Sung-wook of Seoul National University and consists of experts from various sectors including policy innovation, crisis and system management. Its goal is to systematically predict potential future risks through science and technology, propose proactive innovative directions to respond to extreme events, and strengthen resilience against unforeseen crises.

Previously, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced this plan through the ‘Future Strategy 2045’ released in August last year. An ‘X-Event’ refers to a complex and large-scale crisis with a very low probability of occurrence and difficult predictability, but with significant social and economic ripple effects if it occurs. The magnitude and nature of the impact vary depending on the country’s response capabilities.

For example, topics include how Korean society would respond if the internet were suddenly completely cut off due to hacking or natural/artificial disasters, or if a super-strong infectious disease surpassing COVID-19 became a pandemic. The normalization of ultrafine dust and the advent of a retirement age of 75 are also major issues that Korean society may face. In Europe, there is an increasing trend of preparing national strategies by assuming scenarios such as the collapse of the European Monetary Union, a 90% drop in international oil prices, and Nokia’s market exit.

This discussion will proceed in three stages: predicting X-Events, drafting expected scenarios, and proposing science and technology policy directions to respond to them. Using global future outlook reports and issue exploration systems, risk keywords with potential occurrence will be derived, and among them, major X-Events with significant impacts on Korean society will be predicted and selected through expert discussions and public surveys. For each X-Event, expected scenarios reflecting triggers, ripple effects, and development patterns will be drafted, and based on these, comprehensive policy directions covering response, recovery, and prevention will be proposed.

In this process, the General Committee will review the overall direction of the ‘X-Event Response Strategy,’ conduct in-depth analysis of the selected X-Events, and finalize science and technology policy directions. Additionally, interdisciplinary committees supporting the General Committee will be formed for each X-Event to gather opinions from research institutions and draft and propose scenarios and policy agendas.

The Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), as the lead research institution, will play a leading role throughout the strategy establishment process, including basic research and the formation of a promotion system for X-Event research. Starting with basic research for selecting X-Events, specific policy directions reflecting concrete response measures will be derived by the end of this year.

Jung Hee-kwon, Director of the Science and Technology Policy Bureau at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, “Recently, crises never experienced before, such as COVID-19, have been continuously occurring, raising the need to establish a national-level future response system,” adding, “We will prepare a systematic future strategy by broadly collecting opinions from various experts and the public.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.