A major challenge for management, however, will be incorporating the unknown and potentially unpredictable impact of global climate change on the potential spread of established invaders.
And the potential spread of weapons of mass destruction casts a shadow over the pursuit of peace.
Given the threat of more rain and the potential spread of disease, time is not an ally.
Health officials have repeatedly expressed concern over the potential spread of SARS to Africa and the enormous difficulty health workers would have in containing it there.
At the time, the US and Europe were gripped by panic over the potential spread of Ebola from west Africa to other parts of the world.
These experts also expressed concerns about the potential spread of SARS through poorer, medically backward interior provinces and rural areas, where treatment is sporadic and reporting rare.
Doctors say that the highest risk to a woman is not from a future cancer, but from the potential spread of the cancer she already has.
To prevent the potential spread of the virus, the Philippine government ordered the slaughter of 6,000 pigs at a farm north of Manila.
One of the major sore points for some critics was a quote attributed to the report's lead author, Bien Diep, a researcher who said he was concerned about "a potential spread of this strain into the general population".
Officials said the potential spread of the disease into the school might not be determined for two weeks, but they said the possibility of such a development remained small.
Survivors of Ebola can carry the virus in their sperm and transmit it sexually for up to nine months, a study has found, prompting questions over the potential spread of the disease on west Africa.
