Hedgehog and Fox Strategies for Reducing Risks in Infrastructure Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we employ the metaphors of the hedgehog and the fox, as elaborated by Isaiah Berlin and recently employed by Philip Tetlock, in order to contrast two opposite but complementary approaches to infrastructure risk management. We summarize how a combined hedgehog and fox strategy is in evidence in two peer-reviewed monographs recently published by ASCE, as well how additional activities such as those by the American Lifelines Alliance have deployed this combined strategy. We provide plausible reasons why a combined hedgehog and fox strategy can be more successful in reducing risks in civil infrastructure systems than either an exclusively hedgehog or an exclusively fox strategy.