Emergent Global Pandemic Risks, Complex Systems, and Population Health

This chapter focuses on theoretical understandings of complex systems and their relevance for strategies to plan for, and adapt to, pandemic events. It considers, from a geographical perspective, the literature conceptualising complexity and nexus theories. This literature highlights diverse features of complexity, such as emergence, path dependency, openness and closure, self-organisation, and co-evolution. The chapter explores the relevance of these for human experience of pandemics and the knowledge and action upon which effective preparedness and response may depend. The complex interdependency of sociopolitical, economic, and health-care systems has become very evident as societies have struggled to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature on complexity underlines the need to combine and exchange different sources and types of knowledge and observation. These include geographical perspectives that inform planning and response to pandemics and include sensitivity to regional and local variability in the organisation and functioning of complex systems. These perspectives also suggest themes for future research.