NZCat
The Aotearoa NZ Catastrophe Resilience Project (NZCat) is developing an evidence base and policy agenda for resilience to major global catastrophe.
Anyone with expert knowledge pertaining to NZ can contribute by completing the NZCat Survey.
If you know about NZ transport, energy, food, water, ICT, economy, trade, resilience, or any other aspect of NZ society, then we would value your perspective.
The survey presents a catastrophe scenario beyond that usually considered when assessing nationally significant risks.
Ignored, these scenarios could lead to catastrophic loss and suffering.
Solutions are possible, and we seek innovative contributions about the risks, and how such scenarios could best be addressed both before and after the fact.
Please share the survey with others who might provide valuable insights.
The NZCat Project
The NZCat project began in late 2022. We will publish findings in Nov 2023.
Progress to date:
- Developed a Hazard Profile for the risk to NZ of a Northern Hemisphere nuclear war.
- Conducted a workshop to validate the Hazard Profile and frame knowledge gaps.
- Deployed a survey across ten key sectors seeking to better understand the catastrophic impacts of this scenario and crowdsource innovative solutions.
- Published a series of blogs and papers that provide information on global catastrophic risk and NZ risk and resilience processes.
- Made submissions through a global catastrophe lens on key NZ Government work streams.
- Wrote letters to Ministers advocating for increased focus on global catastrophe.
Project components also underway include:
- A quantitative analysis of liquid fuel requirements for minimum food production, based on frost resistant crops for nuclear winter, and estimating necessary biofuel scale-up.
- Assessment of where solutions to mitigate global catastrophe intersect with existing national priorities.
You can see a video about our work here:
Next Steps
Following analysis of all your survey responses, we will publish a summary of the results (~July) and convene an expert roundtable (~August) to discuss the findings.
The roundtable will be followed by a set of in-depth interviews (~September) to clarify important threats and opportunities to integrate in the policy agenda, and how these intersect and complement existing resilience initiatives.
You can express interest in the roundtable event, or volunteer to be interviewed, by completing the survey.
Finally, we will run a workshop (~October) to determine the most critical and high-impact areas to focus recommendations from this work.
To contribute to the NZCat project, click here to complete our survey.
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