Strategic Assumptions Document
The Assumptions Register
The statements a national pandemic plan tends to treat as certain. Surfacing them is the point: a scenario's job is not to predict the future but to windtunnel these assumptions against plausible, precedent-free worlds — to see which hold and which break.
A system can be excellent at preparing for what it has seen and still be blind to what it has not. The purpose of scenario work here is to build readiness for the precedent-free — not just better plans for the last crisis.
| ID | Assumption treated as certain | Sensitivity | TUNA | Windtunnelled by | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Surveillance will detect the next threat early enough to act on it.Source: Plan default | high | N · U | Disease XZoonotic SpilloverDeliberate ReleaseMass-Gathering OutbreakVector-Borne Disease | Open |
| A2 | The next serious pathogen will resemble what we have seen (respiratory).Source: Structural silence — reference scenario is influenza | high | N | Disease XAI–Bio Convergence | Open — handle with care |
| A3 | Communities will comply with public-health measures as they did before.Source: Ladder / lessons-learned | medium | U · A | Mass-Gathering Outbreak | Thinly tested — trust scenario not yet built |
| A4 | Medical supply chains will keep functioning during a global surge.Source: Ladder | medium | U · T | Medical Countermeasure & Supply-Chain Disruption | Open |
| A5 | Readiness is a controllable quantity you can hit as a target.structural silenceSource: 85% readiness-index framing | high | — | Disease XAMR SurgeMedical Countermeasure & Supply-Chain Disruption | Open — service-of-target framing |
| A6 | Existing biosecurity/biosafety oversight matches the pace of the science.Source: Structural silence | high | U · A · N | Biotechnology & BiosafetyAI–Bio Convergence | Open |
| A7 | Human, animal and environmental surveillance will integrate in time (One Health).Source: Plan default | medium | A | Zoonotic SpilloverVector-Borne Disease | Open |
| A8 | Diagnostics can identify a novel or fully drug-resistant pathogen.Source: Plan default | high | N | Disease XAMR SurgeVector-Borne Disease | Open |
| A9 | A biological event is a health event, not a security event.Source: Plan framing | medium | A | Deliberate Release | Open |
On sensitivity
“High” sensitivity means the assumption touches an officially-owned national target. It is tested as robustness work in service of that target — the plan is an asset to be fortified, not an adversary.
Why no probabilities
We do not put probabilities on scenarios. A genuinely novel (N-dominant) threat has no reference class, so forcing a likelihood turns foresight back into forecasting. Likelihood×impact is kept for known, reference-class risks; novel threats are explored through TUNA and scenario worlds.
A6-style gaps and “thinly tested” rows are the signal for what to build next. Assumption A3 (community trust) is the clearest — it maps to the Recovergap flagged in the scenario portfolio.