CPSICC Nexus Workshop 2024

Advanced Research Workshop

Unravelling The Cyber-Physical-Social Infrastructure Climate Change (CPSICC) Nexus

July 29, 2024 - August 1, 2024 | Washington, DC

The CPSICC Nexus Workshop represents a collaborative effort to address the critical convergence of climate change, cybersecurity, and essential infrastructure, which includes social-economic-political institutions. As our global challenges grow in complexity, understanding the intricate interplay between these domains becomes paramount in order to prepare for the future. This highly interactive workshop brings together experts from various fields in academia, government, industry, and policy-making, from both NATO member and partner countries, to tackle these multifaceted threats. 

Directors and Organizers:

The workshop is co-directed by Matthew Huber, Director of Purdue University’s Institute for a Sustainable Future (ISF), and Surya Nepal, Senior Principal Research Scientist at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). This invitation-only Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) is supported by NATO’s Science for Peace and Security Programme and has been co-funded by the DHS Science & Technology Directorate (S&T).  It is convened in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories and Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).

Purpose:

This interactive workshop aims to identify the building blocks of risk that lie at the nexus of climate change (e.g., direct impacts, tipping points, geoengineering, mitigation and adaptation efforts), cybersecurity (e.g., AI/deep learning/quantum computing), critical physical infrastructure with an emphasis on food-energy-water (FEW) systems, and social systems with an emphasis on policy, legal frameworks, institutions, and migration. In bringing together experts from various fields of academia, government, and industry from NATO member and partner countries, we will identify gaps in our collective knowledge of risk that lay at the nexus of climate change, cybersecurity, and the critical infrastructure that supports society through FEW services, national security, and defense systems.

Goals:

The goal of this workshop is to commence the process of developing a roadmap for securing the future and minimizing the compound risk posed by the interaction between these cyber-physical-social systems and climate change impacts on national security and defense. This NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW) will serve to formulate recommendations in the CPSICC Nexus and foster partnerships among experts from different nations. By the end of the workshop we will identify R&D gaps within this nexus and set an agenda for filling these gaps.