On May 21, 2020, Daryl Haegley, Yusuf Abdul-Qadir, Melissa Flagg, Lee McKnight, Mary Collins, Lin Wells, and Divya Chander shared their perspectives in a live video discussion titled “Mobilizing industry to encourage multi-sector solutions to address emergent global concerns” and moderated by David Bray, Director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. The discussion focused on new ways of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic and application of multi-sector industry solutions to current and potential future pandemics.

The panelist focused on how nations and industries need better more timely approaches to future outbreaks and potential additional waves of COVID-19, as well as IoT-based risks and cyber-related concerns, disruptions to supply chains and autonomous systems in cities or factories, and better monitoring for manufactured biological or chemical threats. Continuous efforts are needed to increase the resilience of physical systems, cyber infrastructure, and people-centered communities in a way that respects and preserves privacy, sensitive information, and empowers people to have choice.

We need ways of advancing shared solutions with distributed action and data sharing of a shared context that does not involve centralized control nor centralized data repositories. Early examples already exist. Imagine you were trying to describe to someone in the 1920’s the importance of having smoke detectors linked to calling the fire department and automatic sprinkler systems to put out the fire. We can do the same thing for public health resilience. We can do the same for IoT and cyber-related infrastructure. And we can do the same thing for open societies in ways that do not required centralized data collection.

Related Experts: David Bray, Divya Chander, Linton Wells II, PhD, and