RiskSense is a portfolio of anticipatory resilienceAnticipatory ResilienceThe capacity to sense emerging risks and take proactive action before crises materialise, rather than only responding reactively. tools that make systemic risks legible and actionable at civic-scale.
We equip citizens with the intelligence to see systemic risks before they cascade, and the agency to shape collective resilience from the ground up.
Explore the portfolio stack →Risk Clinics
Civic deliberation spaces for sensing, planning, acting on, and being accountable to systemic risks.
Visualisation & Mapping
Compound risksCompound RiskRisks that interact and amplify each other, creating cascading effects greater than the sum of individual risks., vulnerability cascades, zones of low optionalityZones of Low OptionalityConditions where tight coupling between systems has removed room to manoeuvre, meaning only collective or system-level change can restore resilience..
Assessment & Decision-Making
Municipal automation, participatory data, scenario modelling, rehearsal simulations.
Action & Implementation
Adaptation database, planning support, coordination infrastructure.
The RiskSense Portfolio
Four integrated layers designed to work together. Risk clinics surface civic-level needs; visualisation tools make systemic risks legible; assessment capabilities provide evidence; implementation infrastructure translates insights into action. Learning is adaptive: insights from each layer feed back in a continuous loop so we stay agile.
Risk Clinics: Methodology & Typologies
Unlike traditional workshops, Risk Clinics create shared understanding, rehearse responses, surface actionable insights, build relationships, and generate evidentiary pathways that legitimise community knowledge.
Clinic typologies
| Type | Purpose | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Sensing | Surface emerging risks, build collective awareness, identify blind spots | Beginning of adaptation planning, post-crisis sense-making |
| Action | Move from risk awareness to concrete intervention design | Translating plans into projects, community-led solution development |
| Planning | Integrate risk intelligence into formal planning | Local Adaptation Plans, capital budgets, masterplan development |
| Accountability | Track progress, evaluate effectiveness, maintain commitment | Annual review, grant reporting, political accountability |
| Coordination | Enable cross-boundary collaboration on shared risks | Cross-departmental coordination, public-private partnerships |
Clinics can be deployed as standalone interventions, as an integrated sequence, or as iterative learning cycles. Typical engagement: Sensing → Planning → Action → Coordination → Implementation → Accountability → repeat.
Context: A Crisis of Anticipatory Capacity
We live in an era of polycrisis: overlapping, interacting crises that exceed the capacity of traditional risk management systems. Climate breakdown, infrastructure vulnerability, economic precarity, and social polarisation create compound risksCompound RiskRisks that interact and amplify each other, creating cascading effects greater than the sum of individual risks. that don't respect jurisdictional boundaries, departmental silos, or planning horizons. As economist Ilan Noy notes, climate change has already altered the frequency and severity of extreme weather, rendering historical data an increasingly unreliable guide for actuarial models.
The deeper problem is a lack of visibility and choice. Systemic risks operate through cascades. For example, escalating temperatures during an urban heatwave will likely compound into power outages, water scarcity, transport failure, and care gaps. These cascades remain invisible and normalise a sense of inevitability, social apathy, and distrust in governance. Creating the capacity to identify and respond to these risk cascade patterns—or ‘shapes of risk’—is therefore critical.
Current approaches to risk management operate primarily at two scales:
Institutional/Corporate scale: Sophisticated risk modelling exists for companies, insurance firms, financial institutions, and large government agencies. These systems are expensive, proprietary, and focused on protecting institutional interests. They externalise risk downward: onto municipalities without resources, onto communities without leverage, onto individuals without optionality.
Individual/Consumer scale: Apps and tools provide atomised, reactive information (e.g. flood zone maps, air quality alerts, emergency notifications). These are useful but fragmentary, offering adaptation strategies for those with resources to adapt but little capacity for collective action or systemic response. Risk remains individualised, absorbed as personal responsibility rather than recognised as governance failure.
The Missing Middle: Civic-Scale Risk Intelligence
Between these two extremes lies a critical gap: civic-scaleCivic-ScaleThe level between individual/household and large institutions—neighbourhoods, communities, and civil society—where collective action becomes possible. risk governance. This is the scale where:
- Shared vulnerability (‘risk commoningRisk CommoningThe practice of building alignment around shared material vulnerability, turning shared risk exposure into a basis for collective action across difference.’) could become the basis for alignment across difference
- Collective action becomes possible but isn't yet institutionalised
- Community organisations, mutual aid networks, and neighbourhood groups operate
- Local resilience actually gets built through social infrastructure
- Bottom-up knowledge meets top-down planning (or exposes where planning has failed)
At this scale, there is remarkably little infrastructure for:
- Sensing emerging risks before they become crises
- Making systemic risks legible to non-experts
- Community-led innovation from responses to preparedness
- Rehearsing responses through structured deliberation
- Coordinating action across fragmented actors
- Holding systems accountable to risk reduction commitments
Why now?
Several converging factors: climate adaptation imperative; post-COVID recognition of community-level mutual aid; insurance market breakdown; democratic innovation demand; AI opportunity; and funding availability focused on implementation.
Innovation Gaps & Opportunities
Five critical gaps that RiskSense addresses.
Gap 1: Civic Intelligence Infrastructure
Risk intelligence is abundant at institutional and individual scales but absent at the civic scale where collective action happens.
Build infrastructure for distributed risk sensing that creates actionable civic intelligence and capacity to recognise, interpret, and respond to systemic risk cascades, identifying where coupling constrains agency and where communities have already built resilience capabilities.
Applications: Public health infrastructure, civic tech, democratic innovation, community resilience programs
Gap 2: From Rehearsal to Reality
Many tools help visualise or model risks, but few help communities move from risk awareness to coordinated response. The action gap is massive.
Create spaces where people don't just learn about risks but rehearse responses, identify coordination needs, surface resource gaps, and commit to actions. This is the bridge between scenario planning and actual implementation.
Applications: Disaster preparedness, public health emergency response, climate adaptation implementation grants
Gap 3: Compound Risk Legibility
Most risk assessment tools are single-issue. Systemic risks, however, are nested and entangled. There's little tooling for making compound risks legible at civic scale.
Not just mapping individual risks, but showing how they interact, amplify each other, and create vulnerability cascades. Identify zones of low optionality where interdependencies have removed individual agency and only system-level change can restore choices.
Applications: Climate adaptation, urban resilience, critical infrastructure protection, health equity
Gap 4: Anticipatory Governance at Civic Scale
Growing academic and policy interest in anticipatory governance and futures literacy, but most work remains abstract or high-level. Few practical civic tools exist.
Build infrastructure for civic foresight—helping communities develop the muscle to sense emerging risks, deliberate on futures, and take anticipatory action before crises hit. Support risk stewards with tools, legitimacy, and coordination mechanisms.
Applications: Democratic innovation, civic participation, futures/foresight research, urban governance innovation
Gap 5: From Paralysis to Agency
Systemic risks can be overwhelming, leading to paralysis rather than action. Tools often increase awareness without building agency.
Design processes explicitly for agency-building—not just information sharing but helping people identify leverage points, find collaborators who share material vulnerability, and take meaningful action within their sphere of influence.
Applications: Community organising, civic engagement, climate anxiety/action programs, mental health and resilience initiatives
Theory of Change
The RiskSense change pathway operates through three reinforcing mechanisms.
- Civic-scaleCivic-ScaleThe level between individual/household and large institutions—neighbourhoods, communities, and civil society—where collective action becomes possible. sensing and deliberation infrastructure makes compound risksCompound RiskRisks that interact and amplify each other, creating cascading effects greater than the sum of individual risks. and zones of low optionalityZones of Low OptionalityConditions where tight coupling between systems has removed room to manoeuvre, meaning only collective or system-level change can restore resilience. legible.
- Legibility enables risk commoningRisk CommoningThe practice of building alignment around shared material vulnerability, turning shared risk exposure into a basis for collective action across difference.—creating a new basis for alignment and collective action.
- Civic stewardship becomes constitutive—municipalities, insurers, financiers, and policymakers become responsive to civic intelligence.
At each scale, the same dynamic operates: institutions becoming accountable to civic intelligence because communities are the stewards of critical knowledge about systemic behaviour. This is how Anticipatory resilienceAnticipatory ResilienceThe capacity to sense emerging risks and take proactive action before crises materialise, rather than only responding reactively. becomes systemic rather than reactive, and how governance failure becomes legible and addressable rather than normalised and externalised.
Adaptive learning runs through the pathway: each stage informs the next, and outcomes feed back into sensing and deliberation. This loop keeps the system agile and responsive rather than one-off or linear.
How to work with us
Value propositions, use cases, ways to engage, and who we work with—one place. We offer flexible resourcing and partner with the following types of organisations.
Value propositions
RiskSense creates value for multiple stakeholder groups by addressing distinct pain points.
A. Institutional & Financial Innovators
Pain point — We're designing new institutional architectures for outcomes-based investment, bioregional financing, or resilience accelerators but lack the intelligence infrastructure to identify where capital should flow, what risks to prioritise, and how to demonstrate that interventions are achieving intended outcomes.
- •Structured methodologies to map systemic risk typologies, cascade patterns, and zones of low optionality that financing must address
- •Participatory processes to ground investment priorities in stakeholder lived realities
- •Evidence frameworks that track whether capital is achieving resilience outcomes, distinguish between interventions that create genuine optionality and those that simply externalise risk absorption
- •Coordination mechanisms to align diverse actors (funders, communities, businesses, public agencies) around shared vulnerability and risk commoning
- •Legitimacy through transparent, inclusive processes for setting priorities
B. Local Governments & Municipalities
Pain point — We have climate plans, risk assessments, and good intentions but struggle to move from analysis to coordinated action. Our departments work in silos, we lack community buy-in, and can't track whether our interventions are actually working.
- •Structured frameworks to translate risk assessments into actionable strategies
- •Participatory processes that build community ownership and political support
- •Coordination mechanisms that break down departmental silos
- •Accountability tools that demonstrate impact to funders and constituents
- •Evidence base for securing climate adaptation and resilience funding
C. Community Organizations & Mutual Aid Networks
Pain point — We see risks emerging in our communities every day, but lack tools to make these patterns visible, gain legitimacy with decision-makers, or coordinate effective responses across organisations.
- •Methods to document and articulate community-observed risks, surfacing where communities have already built informal adaptation capacities and what critical gaps still exist
- •Platforms to make grassroots intelligence visible to power
- •Coordination infrastructure to align efforts across groups
- •Evidence to advocate for resources and policy changes
- •Capacity to move from reactive crisis response to anticipatory resilience
D. Funders & Investors
Pain point — We want to fund climate resilience and community preparedness, but struggle to identify high-leverage interventions, assess whether investments are effective, and ensure funding reaches communities most at risk.
- •Transparent frameworks showing how investments translate to risk reduction
- •Evidence of community-driven demand and readiness
- •Mechanisms to track outcomes and hold grantees accountable
- •Models for public-private-community co-investment
- •Portfolio approach that diversifies risk while maximising impact
E. Researchers & Academics
Pain point — We produce valuable research on systemic risks, but it rarely translates into practical action. We lack real-world testing grounds and struggle to bridge the theory-practice gap.
- •Living labs for testing anticipatory governance methods
- •Rich qualitative & quantitative data on community risk perceptions
- •Partnerships with practitioners for co-research and validation
- •Case studies demonstrating real-world impact of research insights
- •Platform for knowledge exchange between academic and practitioner communities
Use cases & deployment contexts
RiskSense tools support multiple deployment contexts. Each strengthens the same foundational capabilities at different jurisdictional scales.
Swipe or scroll horizontally to explore all use cases
Community-led resilience building
Neighbourhoods facing multiple intersecting risks use Sensing and Action Clinics to design interventions (cooling centres, mutual aid networks); Coordination Clinics align with municipal resources.
Municipal planning informed by civic intelligence
Sensing Clinics surface community-observed vulnerabilities; Planning Clinics translate civic intelligence into actionable strategies; visualisation tools build political will.
Democratic innovation & participatory governance
Sensing Clinics as input to participatory budgeting; Planning Clinics within citizen assemblies; Accountability Clinics evaluate whether participatory decisions achieved intended outcomes.
Cross-jurisdictional coordination
Coordination Clinics align strategies across jurisdictions; shared visualisation creates common operating picture; Planning Clinics identify joint investments.
Sector-specific critical systems resilience
Healthcare, education, utilities—Sensing Clinics surface how cascades work in practice; Action Clinics design sector-specific interventions; Coordination Clinics align sector institutions with community capabilities.
Post-crisis learning & adaptation
Accountability Clinics evaluate what worked; Sensing Clinics identify emerging patterns; Action Clinics rapidly redesign improved responses.
Capital allocation grounded in shared vulnerabilities
Sensing Clinics map risk landscape; visualisation shows cascades; Coordination Clinics align bioregional actors; Planning Clinics translate civic intelligence into investment criteria.
Insurance markets & risk transfer
Sensing Clinics document informal adaptation capacities; visualisation makes community stewardship legible to insurers; Accountability Clinics track loss reduction over time.
Resilience prioritisation for outcome accelerators
Sensing Clinics surface interdependencies; visualisation maps intervention interactions; Action Clinics test hypotheses; Accountability Clinics track resilience outcomes.
Resourcing & partners
Multiple revenue streams support pilots, scale-up, and ecosystem building. We are seeking active participation and collaboration from the following types of partners.
Resourcing model
Training & capacity building
£200–£1,000/participant
Municipal contracts
£50,000–£150,000 per engagement
Grant-funded pilots
£100,000–£500,000 for 12–18 month pilot
Platform licensing (SaaS)
£10,000–£50,000/year per municipality
Democratic governance & civic infrastructure
Variable
Policy advisory & evidence synthesis
Variable
Public-private partnerships
£50,000–£300,000; retainers £80,000–£250,000/year
Partners we work with
Municipal networks
Dissemination channels, national associations, regional development agencies
Research institutions
Universities with urban planning/resilience programs; think tanks focused on governance innovation
Funding bodies
Climate funds; foundations & philanthropies; government innovation funds
Technology partners
GIS platforms (ESRI, MapBox); civic tech organisations; companies interested in social impact
Community organisations
Neighbourhood associations; mutual aid networks; environmental justice organisations
Building futures, together.
Get in touch
For more information or to explore partnership opportunities:
risksense@darkmatterlabs.orgRiskSense is a project of Dark Matter Labs. Draft Report v0.2 — February 2026.