Talk: Catastrophic risks to the global food system and how to address them
How do we reduce the likelihood and severity of a major, rapid collapse of the globalized system of food production? Morgan Rivers, researcher at ALLFED (ALLiance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, ALLFED.info) visiting Newspeak House until January 6th from Berlin, will summarize the work he's done on the topic and have a round of questions afterwards.
For the last three years Morgan has worked at the intersection of technology and policy, as a data scientist and researcher at ALLFED focused on addressing gaps in policy, research, and technology around potential large-scale disruptions of the food system. He researches the food supply chain effects of geomagnetic storms and HEMP (EMP attacks from nukes burst at high altitude) causing large long term power outages, nuclear winter, supervolcanic eruptions, and other risks. Among other milestones he has had influence over the introduction of litigation to prepare the food system better in the inflation reduction act in the US via the white house office of science and technology, successfully helped to introduce official plans for nuclear winter in Argentina, helped start a project to create a global backup low bandwidth internet in case of global disruption to the electricity supply, and published several policy relevant research papers.
The talk will present his software modelling work on:
Crop modelling of continued outdoor crop production in nuclear winter
An integrated model of the global food production system in nuclear winter and the effects of key policy interventions, with and without international food trade
An end-to-end model of geomagnetic storm effects on the US and Europe power grids.
Supply chain modeling in the continental US of the loss of electricity supply due to HEMP or a massive cyber attack
A backup satellite system design that can be used to beam data directly to cell phones even if the the power is out and internet and cell service are disrupted