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Film theorist David Bordwell has identified around 150 films from the 1990s that foreground social networks through assemblages of characters who are linked and whose paths intersect, only occasionally and often accidentally, through the unfolding of complex narratives. Critics only began to recognize these films as belonging to a coherent cinematic genre around 2005, coining related category names that have included “hyperlink cinema,” “criss-crossers,” “multi-protagonist films,” “fractal films,” “database cinema,” and “network narratives.” Network films flourish in a cultural milieu characterized by an interest not only in network structure but also dynamic processes of emergence: the creation of complex higher-level phenomena from interactions among lower-level components of a system. Moving pictures use audio-visual aesthetics and formal techniques such as crosscutting to explore this paradigm. This chapter focuses on Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana (2005). This film engages with a transnational historical present marked by the majority of network films, albeit more directly than most other examples of this genre. In a more singular way, the film uses its formal innovations to grapple with the specificity of discussions in sociology, economics, and politics about so-called “terrorist networks.”

Risk models provide the roadmaps that guide the analyst throughout the journey of risk assessment, if the adage ‘To manage risk, one must measure it’ constitutes the compass for risk management. The process of risk assessment and management may be viewed through many lenses, depending on the perspective, vision, values, and circumstances. This chapter addresses the complex problem of coping with catastrophic risks by taking a systems engineering perspective. Systems engineering is a multidisciplinary approach distinguished by a practical philosophy that advocates holism in cognition and decision making. The ultimate purposes of systems engineering are to (1) build an understanding of the system’s nature, functional behaviour, and interaction with its environment, (2) improve the decision-making process (e.g., in planning, design, development, operation, and management), and (3) identify, quantify, and evaluate risks, uncertainties, and variability within the decision-making process. Engineering systems are almost always designed, constructed, and operated under unavoidable conditions of risk and uncertainty and are often expected to achieve multiple and conflicting objectives. The overall process of identifying, quantifying, evaluating, and trading-off risks, benefits, and costs should be neither a separate, cosmetic afterthought nor a gratuitous add-on technical analysis. Rather, it should constitute an integral and explicit component of the overall managerial decision-making process. In risk assessment, the analyst often attempts to answer the following set of three questions (Kaplan and Garrick, 1981): ‘What can go wrong?’, ‘What is the likelihood that it would go wrong?’, and ‘What are the consequences?’ Answers to these questions help risk analysts identify, measure, quantify, and evaluate risks and their consequences and impacts. Risk management builds on the risk assessment process by seeking answers to a second set of three questions (Haimes, 1991): ‘What can be done and what options are available?’, ‘What are their associated trade-offs in terms of all costs, benefits, and risks?’, and ‘What are the impacts of current management decisions on future options?’ Note that the last question is the most critical one for any managerial decision-making.