Context

During my fellowship at the Existential Risk Alliance (ERA), I’ll be working to map the Global Biological Catastrophic Risk (GCBR) landscape. GCBRs are biological risks of unprecedented scale that have the potential to cause such significant damage to human civilization that they undermine its long-term potential. Therefore the GCBR Index basically aims to create a quantitative assessment of each country's contribution to the existential threat of really bad bugs. The index will focus on four major risk factors: zoonotic transmission, gain-of-function research, bioweapons manufacturing, and lone-wolf bio-attacks.

By establishing each nation's contribution to these risk factors, the GCBR Index aims to provide valuable and transparent insights for policymakers, grantmakers, and the broader community to effectively target and mitigate GCBRs. For me, it seems important to do this at the granularity of each country because policy changes and grants are typically implemented at a national level.

Research Questions

1. What is each nation's annual GCBR export?
   1. What is each nation's likelihood of producing a globally catastrophic zoonosis event?
   2. What is each nation's likelihood of producing a globally catastrophic lab leak event?
   3. What is each nation's likelihood of producing a globally catastrophic bio-weapon event?
   4. What is each nation's likelihood of producing a globally catastrophic lone-wolf bio-attack?

Theory of Change

GCBR Index - Theory of Change

Methodology

1. Identify Relevant Factors or Indices:

   1. Here I’ll try to identify the key factors or indicators that will be used to measure and evaluate each relevant risk factor (i.e. zoonotic transmission, gain-of-function research, bioweapons manufacturing, and lone-wolf bio-attacks). Below I’ve thrown together a toy example of what the indices on the Zoonotic Risk Index might look like. The development of these indices will likely require the input of multiple people with substantial experience in biosecurity.

   Using my ‘Zoonotic Risk Index’ as an example: the indices might look something like this:

   1. Natural Zoonosis Risk Burden

      1. National Zoonotic disease burden (Potentially measured in cases of zoonosis/ time period) - I haven't got a great source for this but maybe the

      This indices hopes to capture the probability of a zoonosis event occurring

   2. Institutional Zoonosis response capacity

      1. WHO’s IHR Indicator - Provides an indices ranking each countries Mechanisms for detecting and responding to zoonosis.
      2. GHS indicators for zoonotic risk - Is measures the strength of each countries policies

      These indices hope to capture the probability of a zoonosis event being contained prior to becoming a global pandemic

      • Resources

2. Gather Data:

   1. Collect the necessary data for each indicator identified. This can involve conducting surveys, collecting existing data from various sources, conducting interviews, or utilizing expert opinions.

3. Establish a Weighting System:

   1. Assign relative weights to each indicator to reflect its importance or relevance. Likely this will be done by eliciting the opinions of experts.

4. Normalise Data:

   1. Data could be normalised using Z-scores (but will look into this further)

5. Calculate Index Scores:

   1. Calculate index scores for each entity or unit (e.g., countries) based on the normalised data and weighting system.

6. Validate and Refine:

   1. Validate the index by assessing its reliability, validity, and sensitivity to changes. Seek feedback on the EA forum

The Indices