Harnessing Technology to Address Global Catastrophic Biological Risk

Introduction

Global Catastrophic Biological Risk (GCBR) is a special category of risk involving biological agents – whether naturally emerging or re-emerging, deliberately created and released, or laboratory-engineered and escaped – which could lead to sudden, extraordinary, widespread disaster beyond the collective capability of national and international organizations and the private sector to control. If unchecked, GCBRs would lead to great suffering, loss of life, and sustained damage to national governments, international relationships, economies, societal stability, and/or global security. GCB events will likely arise under a combination of conditions, potentially including the presence of a rapidly spreading and/or highly and quickly lethal biological agent; a naïve global population; and concurrent environmental, social, and political circumstances that make control and recovery very difficult.

Technology to Reduce Global Catastrophic Biological Risks

Throughout history, humanity has turned to technological solutions to solve our most pressing problems. Addressing GCBRs should be no different: new technologies and novel applications of existing technologies will be needed to reduce risk from GCB events.

Recent history with human epidemics like Ebola and Zika have demonstrated once again that infectious diseases can spread rapidly and widely, with severe consequences for human health. Infectious disease epidemics that are highly transmissible and lethal, on the scale of the 1918 influenza pandemic or even more severe, are possible. In addition, biologically-driven disasters for humanity might also be caused indirectly through elimination of important plant and animal food sources or by ecological or environmental catastrophe.

We have seen in many epidemics that traditional approaches to early identification, surveillance, and response are often too slow or limited in scope to prevent disease from spreading and having serious consequences for affected populations. Technological interventions to address GCBRs will thus need to help avoid the emergence and geographic spread and/or reduce the severity of a such a biological event through:

• better detection, surveillance and characterization of a GCB threat such that action can be taken quickly to prevent or quickly quell a biological event; and/or • increased response speed and global response reach in both resource-rich and low-resource- settings to mitigate the impacts of an unfolding event.

Broadly, we think it likely that a distributed, rather than centralized, strategy will be needed to reduce GCBRs. Additionally, technologies will likely need to be democratized, rugged, and easy to use in a variety of settings, or enable experts to rapidly identify and address an emerging event.

1 Points of Intervention and Technology Solutions to Address GCBRs Caused by Infectious Diseases

During human epidemics with global catastrophic potential, there are several inflection points at which effective interventions can be implemented with maximal impact to interrupt event progression. Below are examples of those potential points of intervention:

Prevent Spread Prevent National and International Limit Spread and from Animals to Prevent Humans or Detect Spread Introduction to Major Urban Existential First Human Case Identify First Environments Risk to Cluster and Humanity Prevent an Reduce Epidemic Morbidity and Mortality

Index Case Index Cluster Localized Epidemic International Global Pandemic GCBR Epidemic

Illustrative examples of technology solutions that might be harnessed to address GCBRs:

Project Scope

This is an exploration of extant and emerging technologies with the potential to radically alter the trajectory of severe infectious disease events with catastrophic potential for humanity.

We recognize that reducing GCBR is a multifaceted, complex undertaking and that novel technologies alone will not be a panacea. We also recognize that important work is already ongoing in areas such as vaccine and drug development, biosurveillance, epidemiology, ecology and conservation, and plant and animal health to address these risks. This project does not aim to duplicate existing efforts, but it aspires to identify technologies that, with strategic investment over the next 5-10 years, might significantly reduce the risk of a GCB event.

Technology solutions will need to be faster, more agile, and more scalable than current approaches. We are looking for emerging technologies as well as those already in wide use for other purposes but which have not yet been directed at the problem of severe infectious disease emergencies. Finally, we are interested in technologies that address any stage of a GCB event, but are primarily focused on technologies that can be applied to mitigate the impact of a severe pandemic once it is underway.

Methods

We are speaking with experts like yourself with the goal of uncovering both newly emerging technologies that might be revolutionary in addressing infectious disease GCBRs, and existing technologies that might be harnessed in new ways to reduce these risks.

Interview Questions

Please think about the following questions in preparation for our discussion:

• If you could imagine 5-10 years in the future, what do you envision we should be able to do in controlling biological events with pandemic/GCBR potential? • In your opinion, what is currently “too hard to do” but could have a large return on investment in terms of mitigating GCBRs were it to be solved? • What technologies in your area of expertise do you think would be revolutionary for addressing GCBRs? • What technologies or domains outside of your area of expertise do you think would be revolutionary for addressing GCBRs? • Who else should we speak with? Who might have unique insight into applicable technologies?

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