---
slug: blocked_pressure_boundary_relocation
name: Blocked-Pressure Boundary Relocation
one_liner: "Blocking a hazard at one site without absorbing the generative pressure behind it relocates the pressure across a system boundary rather than eliminating it — typically to a less-monitored region where controls are weaker."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [structural, physical, social]
origin_domain: risk_and_safety_engineering
alternate_origin_domains: [hydrology, environmental_regulation, urban_planning, economics]
aliases: [displacement_not_absorption, hazard_relocation, pressure_squeezing, waterbed_effect, externality_migration]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-05 generalization) — the proposed GENUS of `risk_migration` (lift: strip the risk/safety domain frame — hazards, controls, accountability — leaving the bare physical form 'a blocked pressure relocates across a boundary rather than being absorbed or eliminated'). Discovered in the op-05 remaining-strata sweep 2026-07-03. Tier B candidate. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut. Flag: claimed distinct from `escape_and_leakage`'s containment framing (siblings: diverted water, offshored pollution, traffic pushed to side streets span water/pollution/traffic genuinely) — that boundary is the load-bearing keep/cut question."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `risk_migration` (input), `escape_and_leakage` (named near-neighbor), and any conservation / externality prime; confirm it is a genuine genus (covers the input AND the water/pollution/traffic siblings) and is not a restatement of the input nor an alias of escape_and_leakage or a conservation-law prime; draw a subsumption edge input→candidate + sibling edges at incorporation; sync one_liner to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 5
  structural_abstraction: 4
  transfer_evidence: 5
  reasoning: 'The bare form — a generative pressure meets a local block, is not absorbed or dissipated, and therefore reappears across a permeable boundary at another site — is a near-physical conservation structure and is exceptionally substrate-neutral. It recurs on genuinely unlike media: fluid pressure in hydrology (dam upstream, flood downstream), pollutant mass under regulation (banned locally, emitted offshore), vehicle flow under a closure (jammed artery, congested side streets), and financial/legal risk under a control (capped here, taken there). Transfer evidence is strong because these are independently-named effects ("waterbed effect," externality displacement, congestion diversion) that were coined without reference to one another — the hallmark of a real genus. It scores well above its safety-framed input `risk_migration` (bound to hazards, controls, and accountability language). Held just under the ceiling on structural abstraction because "generative pressure" and "boundary" import a mild physical metaphor that is not perfectly content-free, but this is as close to a conservation law as social patterns get.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: risk_migration
  similarity: 0.72
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.2
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.95, evaluative_weight: 0.2, institutional_origin: 0.05, human_practice_bound: 0.1, import_vs_recognize: 0.1}
  rationale: 'The pattern is recognized as a bare, near-physical structure across substrates rather than imported as a doctrine: its vocabulary (pressure, boundary, relocation, absorption) travels almost frictionlessly from fluids to traffic to regulation. It carries only mild evaluative weight (the relocation is usually undesirable, but the structure itself is value-neutral — pressure simply goes somewhere) and has no single institutional home, being independently named in hydrology, environmental policy, and traffic engineering. Sits firmly at the structural pole.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Blocked-Pressure Boundary Relocation

## Core Idea

Blocked-pressure boundary relocation is the near-physical structure in which *a generative pressure is blocked at one site without being absorbed or dissipated, and therefore does not vanish but reappears across a permeable system boundary at another site* — typically one that is less monitored, more weakly controlled, or where accountability is diluted. The one constraint stripped from the input `risk_migration` to reach this genus is the *risk-and-safety domain frame*: the input phrases the pattern in terms of hazards, safety controls, and diluted accountability, but nothing in the load-bearing form requires that the relocated quantity be a "hazard" or the block a "control." What remains is a conservation-flavored displacement relation: block a flow locally, leave its source intact, and the flow finds another exit.

The anatomy has three load-bearing parts. First, a *persistent generative pressure* — an ongoing source (water head, pollutant production, traffic demand, risk appetite) that keeps supplying the flow, so blocking the outlet does not stop the supply. Second, a *local block that does not absorb* — the intervention stops the flow *at one site* but neither reduces the source nor dissipates the accumulated pressure; it merely closes one path. Third, a *permeable boundary and a downstream sink* — because the pressure is conserved and one exit is closed, it relocates to whatever adjacent region will accept it, and that region is characteristically less-monitored (measurement rarely follows the flow across the boundary). The characteristic payoff is *local success that reads as a win*: the treated site genuinely improves, which is why the intervention is chosen and celebrated. The characteristic cost is *displaced, often worsened harm plus measurement blindness*: the total pressure is unchanged (sometimes concentrated), it now falls where controls are weaker, and because monitoring did not travel with it, the relocation is easy to miss — so the intervention is scored a success while the problem quietly moved.

Read structurally, the same move recurs on genuinely unlike media. In *hydrology*, water diverted or dammed upstream reappears as flooding downstream — the head is conserved and finds a new outlet. In *environmental regulation*, pollution banned in one jurisdiction is moved offshore to unregulated waters — the emission source persists and relocates to where controls do not follow. In *urban traffic*, a road closure does not remove vehicle demand but pushes congestion onto side streets — flow conserved, boundary crossed, monitoring absent. And the input, *risk migration*, runs the identical form when a safety control caps risk at one actor or phase and the risk reappears elsewhere. Fluids, pollutants, vehicles, financial risk — the substrates share nothing but the conservation-displacement skeleton, which is the sign the lift is real and not a restatement of the safety instance.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 05 (generalization / lift) as the proposed genus of `risk_migration`, by stripping the risk/safety frame to expose a substrate-neutral, conservation-flavored displacement structure: a blocked pressure relocates across a boundary rather than being absorbed. Surfaced in the op-05 remaining-strata sweep on 2026-07-03. It claimed the siblings *water diverted upstream → downstream flooding*, *pollution moved offshore*, and *traffic pushed to side streets by a closure* as structurally-unlike co-species spanning water, pollution, and traffic. Manifest tier: B (remaining-strata, `crank/sweep_op05_rest.jsonl` + `manifest_op05_rest.yaml`).

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: this is one of the stronger Tier-B candidates because the underlying structure is nearly a conservation law and is independently named across at least three fields — the "waterbed effect" in policy, congestion diversion in transport, externality displacement in economics — which is the classic signature of a real genus rather than a coinage; substrate-independence estimates are high (composite 4, breadth 5) and the siblings share nothing but the form. The RISKS Kurt should weigh: (1) **alias of `escape_and_leakage`** — the operator flagged this candidate as distinct from `escape_and_leakage`, which frames the phenomenon as *containment failure / something getting out*. The boundary here is that leakage is about a barrier failing to hold, whereas relocation is about a *conserved pressure choosing a new path when one is blocked* — related but not identical. If Kurt reads them as the same structure, cut as alias. (2) **overlap with a conservation / externality prime** — if the corpus has a conservation-law or externality-displacement prime, this may be a species of it rather than a peer; the boundary must be drawn. (3) **restatement of the input** — similarity ~0.72 to `risk_migration`; the honest worry is that this is `risk_migration` with the safety nouns swapped for physical ones. Sharp keep/cut question for Kurt: **is "blocked, non-absorbed pressure relocates across a boundary" a genus distinct from both `escape_and_leakage` (containment framing) and `risk_migration` (its safety species) — or does it collapse into one of them?** Given the strong independent naming across domains, this candidate is a better keep bet than the typical Tier-B coinage.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `risk_migration` (input), `escape_and_leakage` (near-neighbor), and any conservation / externality / displacement prime; if it survives, draw a subsumption edge `risk_migration → blocked_pressure_boundary_relocation` plus sibling/instance notes for the hydrology, pollution, and traffic cases, and a deliberate boundary edge to `escape_and_leakage`. Missing-edge note: the input currently has no genus parent of this shape; that edge plus the escape_and_leakage boundary are the densification value. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
