Early Warning for Individuals and Small Businesses – Overcoming Energy Insecurity

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) How can individuals and small business leaders protect themselves against the crises and upheavals that seem to be imposed on them? Can they take advantage of tools that are generally reserved for state actors, especially security forces, and sometimes for large companies? Can such a tool, early warning, be useful for …

The Water Sigils

The aim of the Water Sigils is to be a daily scan focusing on water security. We are currently investigating new AI ways to deliver an even better Water Sigils. The original complimentary version ran from May 2012 to April 2023. The Sigils are a series of scans exploring the horizon for weak signals related to various …

Speech at Alterre Day: Unsustainable! Towards Solutions…

On 21 January 2022, Alterre Bourgogne Franche-Comté organises its yearly conference Alterre Day on the theme: Unsustainable! Which solutions for a better and desirable world?VISIO CONFÉRENCE – 21 JANVIER 2022 Don’t miss Alterre day Book your day (conference in French) to follow the speakers who will demonstrate that there is a need to enlighten public …

When Seas and Maps Impact Geostrategy and the Future

Sovereign territory is key for power and for activities. This principle will most probably remain more or less so in the foreseeable future. Thus, what is the territory over which each state is sovereign? What is the size of each of these territories? And where are these territories located? How does the geographical international world …

The Chinese Fishing Fleet, Influence and Hunger Wars

(Art design: Jean-Dominique Lavoix-Carli) The Chinese fishing fleet is a gigantic organisation. It is composed of a mind-numbing number of ships, “somewhere” between 2.600 and 17.000 distant-water fishing ships (M. Guttierez, A. Daniels, G. Jobbins, G. Guttierez Almazor, C. Montengro, China’s Distant Water Fleet, Scale, Impact and Governance, ODI, 2020). These myriads of ships operate …

COVID-19 and Food Insecurity Early Warning

This brief article is a first early warning about food insecurity resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The danger is rising and deserves further and more in-depth analysis and monitoring. As the COVID-19 pandemic developed, we immediately added food insecurity on our watch list of issues to monitor (see our COVID-19 section). To date, mid-May 2020, …

The Midwest Floods, the Trade War and the Swine Flu Pandemic: The Agricultural and Food Super Storm is Here!

In May 2019, for the second time in three months, Central U.S. is hammered by record-breaking floods. Those floods are impacting Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska and Iowa (Susannah Cullinane, Hollie Silvermane, Sheena Jones, “Central US reels from week of deadly weather”, CNN, May 26, 2019). In Van Buren, Arkansas, the Arkansas River level reached …

Smart Agriculture, International Power and National Interest

Smart farming, the combination of agriculture, artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT), will help tackle the various challenges of food security, and usher the happenstance of a new world. It will also change what international food security means. We present here some of the features of the new “international smart food security”. …

★ Sensor and Actuator for AI (3) – Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and the Future of Agriculture: Smart Agriculture Security? (2)

One of the current focuses regarding Artificial Intelligence is on ethics. For example, on 8 April 2019 the European Commission published its Communication Building Trust in Human-Centric Artificial Intelligence. Google, despite set backs, also tries to implement an AI ethics board (Kelsey Piper, “Exclusive: Google cancels AI ethics board in response to outcry“, Vox, 4 …

★ Sensor and Actuator for AI (2) – Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things and the Future of Agriculture: Smart Agriculture Security? (1)

This article explores the way artificial intelligence (AI) is inserted within its environment through the Internet of Things in a particular domain, agriculture. As a result, “smart agriculture”, a whole new way to produce food, is born. We look at the way various actors include AI in farming and thus envision and develop the future …

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