Dear friends,

A lot of the knowledge needed to address global catastrophic risk – and many other issues – is already out there somewhere in the world. But it’s spread across many different people. The challenge then is bringing people together to share and synthesize their knowledge. GCRI is dedicated to meeting this challenge. In this month’s newsletter, we announce three new initiatives on this front. First, we invite you to join us at the 2013 Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting, which will be December 8-11 in Baltimore. Second, we have published a new conferences directory, featuring conferences related to global catastrophic risk from around the world. Third, we have added a new events section to our website, which pulls all of our various events in one convenient place.

I’m excited that GCRI is bringing people together through both in-person conferences and online events. Conferences like SRA remain the biggest spaces for professional networking and offer a richness of experience that you just can’t get online (yet!). But they can also be expensive and time consuming. They also require travel that puts a lot of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, thereby increasing the risk of global catastrophe. Online events avoid this while offering the opportunity to bring together people who don’t attend the same conferences. I see online events playing an increasingly important role in our lives. As people concerned about global catastrophic risk, I also view it is as our responsibility to take the lead on this. Stay tuned for more online events from GCRI, and as always, please feel free to let us know what you think.

Sincerely,
Seth Baum, Executive Director

Join GCRI At The Society For Risk Analysis 2013 Annual Meeting

The SRA 2013 Annual Meeting will be December 8-11 in Baltimore. We invite you to join us at this meeting. If you have something to present on any topic related to global catastrophic risk, we want to hear from you. Please send a short (1-5 sentence) speaker bio and presentation description to Seth Baum at seth@gcrinstitute.org.

The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) is the leading professional society for all types of risk. SRA has been very welcoming to the global catastrophic risk community, and indeed has played a central role in GCRI’s existence. GCRI co-founders Tony Barrett and Seth Baum met at the 2010 SRA Annual Meeting, and GCRI has hosted sessions ever since. SRA brings together researchers from many disciplines and other professionals from government, industry, nonprofits, and other sectors. For information about previous GCRI SRA sessions, please click here.

New GCR Conferences Directory – Tell Us What We Missed

As part of its ongoing series of resources for the global catastrophic risk community, GCRI has recently published a directory of global catastrophic risk conferences. The directory features 66 conferences from around the world, organized by continent and by date. The conferences are not all specifically focused on global catastrophic risk. Instead, they all cover topics related to global catastrophic risk, such that global catastrophic risk could readily be discussed there.

We want to hear from you which conferences we missed. If you have any suggestions, please email Grant Wilson at grant@gcrinstitute.org.

New Website Events Section

Our website, gcrinstitute.org, now has a dedicated events section. The section includes pages for discussion groups, online lectures, and Society for Risk Analysis meetings. We are actively planning new events and will announce them online as they become available.

Grant Wilson Promoted To Deputy Director

Grant Wilson has been promoted to Deputy Director of GCRI. He was previously a Professional Associate. The promotion acknowledges the growing leadership role that Grant has come to play for GCRI.

New IEET Article: International Treaties For Emerging Technologies

Seth Baum and Grant Wilson have co-authored a new article How to create an international treaty for emerging technologies, published at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. The article follows their previous articles Seven reasons for integrated emerging technologies governance and Emerging technologies: Should they be internationally regulated?, and was written with funds from the GCRI Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign Preventing technological disaster through international treaties. Thank you to everyone who contributed to that.