Security - Global
The mission of this working group is to focus on discussions about global security.
Safe Cities Initiatives
submitted by Mike Kraft
linkedin.com
Terrorism, man made incidents, natural disasters and the current global economic climate, have forced cities to implement Safe City technologies and strategies. Safe City key elements include Social Media Analytics/Monitoring, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and leveraging emerging homeland security technologies to gain greater situational awareness for law enforcement professionals. The purpose of this group is to discuss emerging trends and technologies in the Safe City arena and serve as a networking environment for Safe City professionals. Emerging technologies in this area are PSIM (Physical Security Information Management), Biometrics-Access Control, Social Media Analysis-Monitoring, Explosives and Narcotics Trace Detection and Tactical & Emergency Communications Systems.
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4418022&goback=.gde_1528217_member_165228150
The U.K. August 2011 Riots Could Have Been Predicted
Burned-out hulk of stores and apartments after night of rioting // Source: wikipedia.org
Homeland Security News Wire - July 5, 2012
Researchers studying urban violence have developed a new method which can help city authorities to assess the conditions where conflict could potentially tip into violence; Participatory Violence Appraisal (PVA), used in Kenya and Chile, could have helped to anticipate the tipping points that led to last summer’s riots in cities across the United Kingdom, the researchers say
A University of Manchester team researching urban violence has developed a new method which can help city authorities to assess the conditions where conflict could potentially tip into violence.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Launches Flagship Publication on State of the World's Refugees
unhcr.org - May 31, 2012
NEW YORK, United States, May 31 (UNHCR) – UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres warned on Thursday that factors causing mass population flight are growing and over the coming decade more people on the move will become refugees or displaced within their own country.
In comments marking the launch in New York of "The State of the World's Refugees: In Search of Solidarity," Guterres said displacement from conflict was becoming compounded by a combination of causes, including climate change, population growth, urbanization, food insecurity, water scarcity and resource competition.
All these factors are interacting with each other, increasing instability and conflict and forcing people to move. In a world that is becoming smaller and smaller, finding solutions, he said, would need determined international political will.
Sierra Leone: Taylor Verdict a Warning to War Crimes Perpetrators
Former Liberian President Charles Taylor takes notes in court. RNW
allafrica.com - April 26, 2012
Dakar — The landmark guilty verdict today against former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor is a warning to those most responsible for atrocity crimes that they can be held accountable.
A decade after the war in Sierra Leone, the Special Court's ruling marks the first time that a former head of state has been found guilty of war-time atrocities by an internationally-backed court since the Nuremberg trials.
The verdict is a fresh lesson to all those in power that they do not enjoy impunity and a sign of hope in Sierra Leone that those most responsible for the heinous crimes of the eleven-year civil war (1991-2002) are being brought to book.
U.N. Fails to Finalise Rio+20 Plan on Sustainable Future
AlertNet - by Thalif Deen - May 7, 2012
UNITED NATIONS, May 7 (IPS) - After two weeks of closed door negotiations, a U.N. preparatory committee (PrepCom) has failed to reach consensus on a global plan of action, titled "The Future We Want," to be adopted by a summit meeting of world leaders mid-June in Brazil. The negotiators, comprising representatives of all 193 member states, proclaimed limited success, including reducing the size of the action plan - formally called the "outcome document" - from nearly 200 to less than 100 pages.
Looking Back on the Limits of Growth
Chart Sources: Meadows, D.H., Meadows, D.L., Randers, J. and Behrens III, W.W. (1972) / Linda Eckstein
by Mark Strauss - Smithsonian Magazine - April 2012
Recent research supports the conclusions of a controversial environmental study released 40 years ago: The world is on track for disaster. So says Australian physicist Graham Turner, who revisited perhaps the most groundbreaking academic work of the 1970s,The Limits to Growth.
Written by MIT researchers for an international think tank, the Club of Rome, the study used computers to model several possible future scenarios. The business-as-usual scenario estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and precipitous population decline could occur by 2030.
(GO TO THE SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE ARTICLE)
Building Resilience in African Nations is Paramount to Development
STUTTGART, Germany - Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for USAID's Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA), addresses staff of U.S. Africa Command, March 30, 2012, as part of the Command Speaker Series. Lindborg talked about USAID's efforts in Africa and discussed how U.S. AFRICOM can better work with the interagency organization to achieve common objectives. (U.S. AFRICOM photo by Danielle Skinner)
submitted by Samuel Bendett
U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs - by Danielle Skinner
Close Call for Doc PJ in Sudan
By Dr. C. Louis Perrinjaquet - summitdaily.com - January 16, 2012
Dr. Craig Perrinjaquet of Breckenridge examines a gun-toting Honduran villager in 2007. In his most recent international medical aid trip to Sudan, Doc PJ had his camera and other belonging confiscated by rebels. Special to the Daily
Breckenridge doctor returns from war-torn nation
Building Sustainable Communities in Post Conflict and Post Disaster Environments
The Emerald Planet - December 12, 2010
Studio Guests:
Dr. Joseph N. Pelton, Chair (Ret.), International Space University. Author, "Future Cities and MegaCrunch 10 Survival Strategies for the 21st Century"
Jerome Glenn, Executive Director, The Milliennium Project
Dr. Michael D. McDonald, President, Global Health Initiatives.,
Director, National Sustainable Infrastructure Working Group.
Chief Architect, United States Resilience System
The Next 5 in 5 - Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years
submitted by Albert Gomez
ibm.com
Science fiction becomes reality. Worlds collide. The future is now...or within five years, at least.
At the end of each year, IBM examines market and societal trends expected to transform our lives, as well as emerging technologies from IBM's global labs, to develop a multi-year forecast called The Next 5 in 5.
IBM predicts that over the next five years technology innovations will change the way we work, live and play in the following ways:
Vietnam Climate Change Response Lacks Resources
Climate response lacks resources
HA NOI — Insufficient human resources was a major challenge for Viet Nam in responding to climate change, said head of the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry's Personnel and Organisation Department Ta Dinh Thi.
Thi said that although Viet Nam launched its first National Target Programme to respond to climate change in 2008, the biggest difficulty in its implementation lied in a shortage of staff specialising in the climate change-related sector at all levels.
Most staff working in the sector had been trained in other fields and were assigned to do other tasks at the same time.
At present, there are nearly 50,000 people working in administrative and research institutions belonging to the natural resources and environment sector, but more than half of them work in the land management sub-sector, with only 1 per cent focused on tackling climate change.
"Preparing human resources in the climate change sector is an urgent task, especially at local levels," said the deputy director of Viet Nam's Institute of Meteorology, Hydrology and Environment, Tran Hong Thai.
Vietnam’s Exploding Reefers
by Ben Bland - Financial Times - November 7, 2011
It is thanks to the seemingly seamless international shipping network that Americans can buy computers made in China, Europeans can enjoy Argentine steak and people from all over the world can sustain themselves with rice, fish and coffee produced in Vietnam.
But the ease of transporting the humble twenty-foot container around the world means that problematic cargo in one port can swiftly become a global problem, as with a recent spate of exploding refrigerated containers traced to Vietnam.
